KARACHI: And so the iconic food festival of ‘Karachi Eat’ reaches double figures. The three-day event kicked off at the Beach View Park here on Friday. What started as a plan to reclaim public spaces and give people a reason to celebrate good company and build communities, marks this milestone with several innovations.

Organised by ‘Eats Official’, it has also started going by the new name of Eat Food Festival Karachi. But that’s not all that has changed here.

Changing at least three venues and getting bigger and bigger with more and more mouth-watering options over these years, this time the festival literally lets you ‘take the cake and eat it, too’. It is for the first time that those who would want to order anything from the festival from home can do so, too. ‘Eat Cloud powered by Panda kitchens’, the largest cloud kitchens in the country, have teamed up with Foodpanda for this. All you need to do is click on an icon dedicated to Eat Food Pakistan on the Foodpanda app.

Another addition this time is making the festival inclusive to all. There are wheelchairs for differently-abled foodies to join in and enjoy also. For this the Eat Food Festival has partnered with NOWPDP, who have also made sign language accessible here.

Three-day event to end tomorrow; youngsters enjoy great food, good company and music

Yet, another exciting addition this year is the containers, near the entrance, being used as works of art and integrating augmented reality (AR) with them to make the art come alive. The people could literally visit the AR installations and capture the artwork within them.

The mostly young crowd was easy-going and adventurous. They were up for anything. Where the older lot frowned on the entry fee of Rs600, the young happily paid up and not just for themselves but also for friends. Where the tables and chairs fell short, they sat down on the grass to share a bite, chat and enjoy the music, which included a concert, planned for each of the three days.

The festival has always been a platform for budding food entrepreneurs, who serve up the most innovative spread to a demanding audience of food enthusiasts of all ages, and this year is no different.

Among this year’s 125 vendors with every dish and dessert that the heart desires, there was the young 17-year-old Dua Zehra Zain at the Snack Hack stall with her sister Esha and cousins Sajida and Misbah to help her prepare the tacos, chicken wings, etc. The winner of a competition, ‘Beginnings with Us’, Dua’s prize was having a stall at the Eat Food Festival. A culinary student with Hira Foundation, she has a dream of opening her own eatery one day.

Tarkaybaaz was another interesting stall being run by home chef Natasha Sami with her mother Yasmeen Chaudhry, sister-in-law Haniya and brother-in-law Moazzam helping her make chicken and beef khowsuey, khattay aloo and khatti meethi chaat. “It is my first time here at the Festival. Hopefully, it will help me achieve my wish to open a restaurant one day,” Natasha said.

There was delicious fried mushka fish and shrimp curry at the Mahigeer stall being served with traditional condiments such as mint chutney and carrot pickles. Fatima Majeed running the stall was a familiar face from Ibrahim Hyderi, who also works as a social activist for local fishermen. “But I can also cook excellent fish,” she smiled.

With unending options, it was interesting to ask the visitors how they decided on what to have. One of them, Alice Peter, there with colleagues Fatima and Saad, said that she was looking for tacos and wings, something that is not regularly cooked at home, so she went for it the moment she found something like that.

With most people looking for something different from home-cooked meals, there were also some odd ones out such as Tayyaba, who was enjoying sarsoan (mustard) saag (spinach) and makai roti (corn bread). “We have recently moved to Karachi from the Punjab and I missed having this here. Couldn’t help myself when I just happened to stumble upon it here,” she shared.

Anusha Saboor, another young visitor, said that she wanted to taste wraps. “I came upon several stalls offering wraps so I asked those already eating from there how they liked them before deciding where I wanted to get mine from,” she said.

On the same table, there was Hafsa Saboor and her mother Ghazala trying gol gappay. It turned out that the two parties were neither relatives nor friends but only sharing a table because it was the only one available near their choice of stalls. “We may end up good friends now,” laughed Hafsa.

Published in Dawn, January 7th, 2023