I walk into Basic, this shop that is so small that it could have just been a takeaway window but magically also accommodates dining, thanks to their front porch space occupied with a few wooden tables and chairs.
“We are currently keeping the chairs and table inside,” says Maria Khursheed Nizam, owner, Basic. “It is fine if a customer is sitting on them but we can’t have empty chairs outside or they will be taken.”
I nod along, having heard something similar from other restaurants in DHA who offer curb-side dining.
I settle in, opting to sit inside, and look at the menu, as if I don’t have it memorised already. It’s true that menus are some of my favourite things to read but the menu at Basic is particularly easy to remember. It is a tightly curated list of maybe 15 different times which consists of appetisers like patatas bravas, mains which includes bao in different flavours and drinks, which has the infamous Vietnamese Iced Coffee that has been described as the drink to “bring people back from the dead”.
Here for Hot Chocolate
It is 7PM on a Monday night and I’m here after work with only one mission in mind: get to Basic’s hot chocolate. Last year in an attempt to try hot chocolates from all of the places that were offering it in Karachi, I had discovered the one at Basic and had instantly taken a liking to it.
The hot chocolates available around the city are usually this milky mess topped with copious amounts of whipped cream or marshmallows. The one at Basic has no topping. You get a paper cup filled with hot chocolate swirling around like it has just been stirred and that’s it.
The minute you have it, your mind starts to stir up images of cloves, cinnamon, pumpkin spice, fall, winter. Fall. Winter. Much like the way you experience the seasons in Karachi – all of them together at once.
Discovering Papaya Salad
So anyway, I’m here again – at Basic – to try and see if the quality of their hot chocolate still holds. I have people asking for my recommendations and I must do that justice by revisiting my favourites from last year.
As i wait for the hot chocolate to cook (yes it is not pre-made) I glance upon this new addition to their menu: Thai Papaya Salad. I’m hardly known to be a “salad person” but I definitely am a “not-afraid-to-try-something-new” person.
I ask Maria about the salad and she says, “It is REALLY spicy.”
“I would like to order one please,” I say.
The papaya salad arrives and the visual of it is unlike any other salad I have seen. I have not seen many but I probably have a Caesar salad in mind. This has thinly sliced unripe papaya, very similar to how you would see vegetables cut up for a coleslaw but without the mayo. I see the sauce the papaya is in and it is red. Then there are basil leaves on top for the greens.
I pick some of it up from the birchwood disposable fork. The unripe papaya tastes nothing like the summer papaya everyone in Karachi is probably used to having. It is crunchy instead of mushy. The sauce it is in has a spice kick and is also slightly citrus-y. There are cherry tomatoes in the middle and also crushed peanuts that I didn’t immediately spot. The flavours hit you all at once and it is for a lack of a better word: exciting.
I keep having it while Maria looks on cautiously.
After a few moments, my cup of hot chocolate also arrives. I pause because I did want to film the pouring of this particular hot chocolate for my gram.
THAT pause is where the spice from the salad really hits.
“I will not be able to have this cup of hot chocolate while my tongue is on fire,” I think to myself and immediately decide to get everything to go.
I’m sitting in the car, on the way home, with my leftover papaya salad and a cup of hot chocolate in hand.
“This is one of the best things I have had this week,” I think.
We have Basic’s menu up on our menu finder. See here.
