KARACHI: The Spring Fever Festival, a day-long exhibition, held at Habbit City on Friday offered a time to enjoy shopping along with wholesome home-made delicacies.

How could food not have been there with celebrity chef Fatima Sheraz, CEO SMK DGTL Concept, organising the event?

“By organising this festival, I wanted to give our entrepreneurs a platform to showcase their products. These days we are also banning western franchises because of their links to Israel. So why not introduce and promote our own vendors?” chef Fatima reasoned.

There was yummy pasta to purchase at the Kiki’s stall. Kiki is home chef Kiran Andani’s nickname. She markets her food through Foodpanda and also personally on social media. Although she is known for different pastas, at the festival she offered only two kinds: Alfredo and spaghetti with meatballs. A 250ml bowl was selling at Rs350 but people could also buy bigger portions to take home with them if they liked.

Over 50 stalls in day-long Spring Fever Festival offer something not usually found in local market

Two vendors, Munira Huzaifa and Yusra Imran, were sharing a stall. Munira was selling Bohra delicacies and Yusra cookies. The duo happened to be class fellows from the College of Tourism and Hotel Management and decided to share a stall as they were both slightly nervous, it being the first time for them to be marketing their products.

Munira had cooked her son Hamza and daughter Maria’s favourite things vada pav and khandvi, respectively. Her partner Yusra was selling cookies and cinnamon rolls.

Moving out of the food sellers’ enclosure, one found so many other things such as organic products and cosmetics, clothing and jewellery.

At her stall, Hira Nasrullah was claiming to give bald people a thick growth of scalp hair if they used her hair oil, a mix of kalonji oil, almond oil, flaxseed oil, fenugreek seed oil and coriander seed oil. The oil labelled ‘Buy to Be’ was selling at Rs2,000 a bottle but Ms Nasrullah was also selling small portions for trial for Rs500 only. “Once you see what I mean after trying out the oil, I’m sure you’ll want to buy the bigger bottle from me,” she said.

Danish Khan was selling pretty artificial jewellery. When asked if some silver bangles he was selling would lose their shine or turn grey after a while, he honestly said that they might but after a while of use, not immediately. “But even then it’s oxidised jewellery. It will only gain more character as it will look antique,” he smiled.

Maha Rameez, who had her stall not far from him, was selling stainless steel jewellery. But that was not all. She also had paan masala and mouth fresheners on one side. Her brand, Luscious Mouth Fresheners, had the most refreshing blends such as pineapple, blueberry, strawberry, coconut and vanilla mouth fresheners made from slices of the fruits and dried and sugar-coated fennel seeds.

At the S.S. Collection stall, sister and brother team of Sana Shahid (for S.S) and Hasan Khan were selling material as well as offering tailoring services for exquisite evening wear. At Silver Dot, Shumaila Irfan was selling pretty head scarves and hijabs from Rs750 a piece to Rs1,000 only.

At Ideal Collection, Ayaan Abdullah had designer dupatta and head scarves with calligraphy printed on them.

In all there were around 55 stalls all selling something special, which is not too common to find in the local market. Most of them did not have their own outlets but they were all sharing their business cards and offering home delivery services.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2024