Every year, Karachi makes food decisions that gives us something to think about. We have already established that the city no longer stans gimmick-y food that just looks good on the gram – none of the overflowing lava or oozing cheese shenanigans anymore. However, sometimes food trends do get past the city’s sceptical exterior and straight to its heart – like the chocolate pistachio kunafe craze and then you see how mad things can really get.
Without further ado, here are some of the food and restaurant trends that had a hold on our favourite food city (Karachi, duh) in 2024.
Dominant Food Trends in Karachi in 2024
1.
Pop-Ups, Supper Clubs
and Food Streets
If 2019 was the year everything stopped, 2024 was the year everything began to heal. People started coming out in droves in search of shared experiences – and if they happened to be over a meal – even better. As a result, supper clubs like Sukhumvit – a Thai Food Supper Club hosted every weekend by Muizz Kamal Masud are gaining traction over restaurant reservations for a night out.
Tooba Haq, a pastry chef and content creator who blogs at Love At First Table, also tested out the idea for one with a Christmas brunch.
Embracing the concept of shared experiences, food streets also cropped up in different areas of the city where families could sit together in a road-side set up and enjoy food from multiple vendors. Sharfabad Chowrangi became known for its carts selling dumplings, ready-to-eat hotpot bowls and waffles until recently when the carts were removed.
More recently, we have seen a food street called Creek Walk open up in Phase 8 where people can go and enjoy a “festival-like” atmosphere but without the hassle of buying a ticket or waiting to go on one particular day. Some would argue that this format of a food street has become more popular than more elaborate festivals like Karachi Eat, The Commons Karachi or Mashion Bazaar owing to their more casual and easy going format.
Throughout the year we also had “pop-ups” where we saw two or more businesses coming together to host a collaborative event. One popular format included permanent jewelry businesses patnering up with coffee shops.
2.
Local Brands Taking The Lead
International calls for boycott led people in Karachi to also look for local alternatives to popular fast food chains like McDonald’s, KFC and Domino’s. We saw Kababjees going from strength to strength as a local brand, opening outlets and expanding into new categories almost every month. It almost became an inside joke with people speculating if the brand is about to launch a bank next.
We also had people looking for locally made soft drinks like Cola Next. While that’s doing the job for now, there is definitely room for more varieties in drinks to appear with fresher flavour pairings maybe.
3.
Restaurants Crowding Tipu Sultan
Cafes in Karachi have long faced the criticism of only being accessible to residents from Defence and Clifton while not delivering to or being far for dine-in from the rest of the city. This year, coffeeshops, cafes and popular chains sought to address that by opening outlets and franchises in more areas of the city but most notably in Tipu Sultan.
This year we saw iHOP, Costa Coffee, Kanteen by Khaadi and cafes like Melbrew all setting their sights on the area and while residents continue to decry the traffic situation, it seems like more cafes and restaurants are likely to follow suit by opening their outlets in the vicinity.
4.
A Coffee Shop
For Every Person
Karachi was previously considered a city that liked its food more than its drinks. Owners of dessert shops had earlier claimed that it is difficult to run a business in Karachi if it doesn’t sell savoury snacks. However, with the number of coffee shops that the city saw this year this assumption has now been proven wrong.
What the previous years saw happening with hotpot, 2024 did with coffee shops. There is now one in every corner and it would practically be impossible to list all of them. While the people of Karachi have well and truly moved on from their undisputed obsession for chai to also embrace coffee it remains to be seen if there is space for every single coffee shop that exists right now or will the dust have to settle in favour of the few.
5.
Breakfast Menus
This has to be one of our favourite food trends. We saw more and more cafes embrace breakfast menus. In a surprising move, Drop Coffee (Tipu Sultan) announced its launching a full on breakfast menu at their outlet and then we also had more formal restaurants like Loco also starting weekend brunch. POMO – a popular italian restaurant in Karachi also announced a breakfast menu in Karachi this year and so did dessert cafes like Marya’s Cafe and Coco9.
This also means restaurants and cafes increased their operational timing with many now open from 8am to serve the early risers.
6.
Hotpot Bowls
Trust Karachi to come up with a lazier way of having hotpot and then to also over-do it. With several carts in one food street selling a variation of the same hotpot bowl to home-based businesses starting with their only offering being the hotpot bowl – the city gave a frenzied response to this concoction that basically satisfies the craving for spicy noodles but just barely.
This trend also made dumplings suffer from over-exposure and what was once a happiness inducing, rare street food find is now just there in almost every bowl diluting its appeal.
7.
Pistachio Kunafe
This had to be the most talked about food trend in Karachi in 2024. Chocolate bars breaking into half to reveal an oozing amount of pistachio kunafe was everywhere. It made us hope the green colour in the chocolate bars was actually from pistachios. We saw influencers, consumers and business owners making local variants go crazy for this trend.
While we have always enjoyed pistachio as a dessert flavour, this trend necessitated the use of kunafe in the dessert as well which was tricky to incorporate into various forms of dessert.
We had a pistachio kunafe cheesecake, croissant, waffles, cookies and even frappes. There may have been more iterations too but we enjoyed the use of pistachio in some desserts like the Pistachio and White Chocolate Crepe at Pomo, thanks to the trend.
What was your favourite take on the trend? Let us know below.
A trend we see bubbling under the radar with a potential to takeover next year? Matcha.
Coffee shops may be opening up with a frenzy but very few have sought to differentiate themselves from their menu. Matcha is where cafes can stand out and owing to its low-caffeine content, matcha is also becoming a popular choice for people who are fighting their over-reliance on coffee.
These are the food trends we think dominated Karachi in 2024. Which ones do you think are going to carry forward in 2025?
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