Professor Sid

Truly, for every Karachite food is the ultimate love, from fancy fine dining restaurants to road side café’s and the unhygienic,  yet on several occasions absolutely delicious food from ‘thelas’ or the Food handcarts; everything is popular! When you go on the internet and search for places to eat, you’ll get a zillion lavish restaurant names that deliver food to you from around the world. So even if you live here in Karachi, you’ll still get; Irani Kebabs, Lebanese Shawarmas, Japanese Sushi, Thai Noodles, Chinese Manchurians, Rajisthani Thalis, and what not! But that’s not what we talk about here today. Today we explore the food that you get for real cheap, and food that’s really yummy and really filling, the only downside is the hygiene. But if you have the guts and a great immune system then there’s nothing to fear just stop you car next to a ‘Thela wala’ and eat all the ‘bun kebab’s’ or ‘gol gappays’ you want. Winter in Karachi brings the desire to have warm and spicy th...

Regretfully one thing that we Pakistanis did not bring with us from India is their ‘Thali’. Had we done that we’d be eating vegetables, daal, salads, chutneys, papads, rotis, chawal and sweets all together synchronized perfectly into a beautiful healthy meal. I’ve tried a range of thalis from Rajasthani to Gujrati to South Indian, and the rare Non-Vegetarian and have occasional cravings for food like that. No matter how many times I’ve visited buffets a Thali brings an altogether different experience that cannot be replaced by any 5 star buffets. It took ages to finally be able to experience that fun in Karachi. I got a marketing email last year about ‘Raj Rasoi’ the thali restaurant in Karachi. And since then it certainly has been on my list of ‘places to visit’. Unfortunately, the chance only came this year. A colleague of mine visited the place and came back with a special recommendation and insisted we all go there for lunch someday. Which we did, and do my surprise...

2012 is one of those years for me when I want to be very socially active.   Mind you I’m not usually this active every year. The year before Last i.e. 2010 I didn’t want to see a human face. I have the ability to hibernate on yearly basis from social life, for various reasons. So this year I decided to have a reunion of the old office where I worked. Now there I worked with more than 100 people over the course of 5 years, obviously I made some really good friends and some people I just outright hate, I’m sure they know who they are. So having said that I put aside my differences and invited everyone I knew to a reunion. Also when inviting I made sure I told everyone very clearly that the invitation is open to all just come bring your friends, family whoever, just come we’ll sit down together catch up on the latest, reminisce about the past, enjoy ourselves and go back home thinking the day wasn’t so bad, However, statistically speaking out of the 50+ invitations I sent out, I ...

The perfect place to hang out with friends, particularly when you want to have a lot of fun in solitude happens to be Café Lamore. Sadiya discovered it and took us there for lunch one Friday afternoon. We had no idea we’d tie the nuptial knot in the privacy of the place. Went there as singles and returned as a pair. I’m never going to forget how crazy I behaved that day. It was a after a long time that I did something that amazes me till date. Of course my late night mamzar beach exploitation is the other adventure I can never forget; we were after all under the scrutiny of the CID who believed we were fugitives from an asylum. But nevertheless I was short of a few minutes from turning into a werewolf that night I had begun howling at the full moon. I did however become a rabbit and hopped across half the beach I’m sure Rabia and Samirah remember the time, they are after all my partners in crime :P So coming back to my wedding afternoon with Sadia and Saamia; zamzama is really not ...

An evening out with my buddy Sadiya Khursheed, to celebrate her freedom from office we decided to go to Butler’s Chocolate Café. It inaugurated last month and since then we’d been there twice hoping to find the time to actually come back and try the chocolate. With our routine it’s hard to get out and indulge in parties of the sort. We have to wait for an occasion to celebrate; we need a reason to make ourselves happy. Freedom from the office is just one of those reasons to celebrate. So we walk into a very crowded place, mostly youngsters out with friends, colleagues or some very young people out with their parents. We were guided to a corner, where we settled down and requested for a menu coz in the rush of things the attendant forgot to hand them to us. We looked thru it and decided to order their specialties potato wedges with sour cream and Butler’s Club sandwich along with a vanilla milkshake and a strong cappuccino. After we ordered we decided to catch up on some stories of ...