Food Trail Pakistan: Karachi

If you are a Karachiite food enthusiast, you will be a member of at least one food-related group on Facebook. After you’ve been around these for a while, certain trends become visible, especially when it comes to new restaurants. It is seldom that a place opens to near-universal acclaim; generally, there is a rush of great reviews, followed by a burst of pretty bad ones, before things settle down. Also, you will find a few active members in each group whose tastes appear to match yours closely, and therefore when they review a place, you tend to follow those with considerable interest.  Pomo was the latest restaurant to fall in this template. A casual dining place in the spirit of a Neapolitan pizzeria, with a solid team behind it, it opened to pretty poor reviews, including those from some notable influencers. By the time I visited (end July 2018), things appeared somewhat settled. However, the initial burst of ‘teething issues’ had meant we approached the place with lo...

So you know how you aren’t supposed to judge a book by its cover? When it comes to restaurants, that saying often stands in abeyance. After all, in a restaurant market where the premium segment, despite being under served, has plenty of viable options that vie for the diner’s affections, you have to really put together a compelling proposition to stand out, and entice customers through your door. Into this very same premium segment, strides an intriguing new entrant, An Argentinian Grill by the name of El Rancho. Meaning “The Ranch” in Spanish, the name evokes images of gauchos striding about the pampas, with copious amounts of high-quality beef on the menu. The restaurant also has a first-mover advantage, opening its doors ahead of other competitors in the ‘South American Grill’ segment – restaurants in Karachi tend to be like London buses, opening in waves; as the ‘Pan Asian’ wave appears to have crested, the newest cluster appears to be South America. So, a unique customer...