ISLAMABAD EAT 2018 - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

What better way to celebrate the onset of winters than to indulge in a three-day food festival of innovative food stands, gluttonous cuisine galore and some good sun-soaking time with the family? Every winter, the Eat Islamabad hosts various vendors at its food-themed festival, ranging from local restaurants to up-and-coming home-cooks and food vendors. 

The entertainment deprived Islamabadis swarm such events and with the chill setting in, the timing couldn’t be any better! From 23^rd November to the 25^th, the Jinnah Convention Centre was hoarded with families and enthusiastic foodies alike as they enjoyed a diverse range of food.  For the two days that we attended, our objective was to hit all the food startups and skip the restaurants – give the little guy a chance!

Fortunately or unfortunately, our bellies didn’t allow us to visit all the food stalls but it’s safe to say we tried 70% of what the festival had to offer and here’s our verdict on Islamabad Eat 2018:

The Good

Ticketing – Priced at Rs. 250/person and strictly for ‘Families Only’ – the event ensured that it was reasonably priced, safe and not entirely hijacked by hoards of men who’d make it impossible for the gentler gender to feel secure. 

Venue and Parking Space – Centrally accessible and open space made it customer-friendly. Also, countless event managers along with guards guided the onslaught of traffic in order to manage any jams. 

Trash cans – the countless trash cans placed strategically all over the venue was a good touch. Though, a lot of people still reverted to their deplorable habit of dumping their plates wherever they chose to – the event management had still made the effort to keep it clean. 

Sauce disposals – the multiple sauce stands scattered over the ground was a brilliant idea! Huge bottles of ketchup, garlic sauce, mustard were to be used free of cost by whosoever chose too. Though, the stands mostly went unnoticed, they were a sigh of relief for all the ketchup addicts out there. 

Gufti’s kitchen – The ingenious tagline of ‘Never Trust a Skinny Chef’ convinced us enough to give their food a try – theirs was the first stall we stopped at and boy were we pleased! The ladies running the show are the nicest and they know their desi food – we tried their dum kebabs which had this astoundingly delicious smoky flavor and came with a tangy imli chatni which goes wonderfully with the kebabs. They also gave us a complimentary tikka – and we loved it! We highly recommend them!!

 Noor’s Kitchen – This South-Indian styled dosa place is a family-run business and at each festival, we make it a point to try their dosas and till date, we are yet to be disappointed!  For Islamabad Eat 2018, they introduced three new dosa flavors and also for the first time, you didn’t have the familiar Auntie making you the dosa but her employees doing the job for her – and for sure, we missed seeing her behind the stove but the taste was the same and we couldn’t be happier! We stuck to trying the Masala Dosa with the karri patta, imli khajoor, tamatar and Alu Bukhara chutnies – and we decided that we need to go through the entire menu to be entirely satisfied – it’s just THAT good and cannot be missed!

Babloo’z – Beautiful trio of little sliders served with amazing raclette molten cheese sauce were delectably wow. We went for beef sliders in the classic, smokehouse and jalapeno cheese flavors and though they took a while to prepare, they were just the right flavors making it our top pick for the burgers being served at Eat.  A decent mention here is to 23 Thoughts which is also in the slider game but we just preferred Babloo’z over them. 

Upper Crust – On the first day of Islamabad Eat, their stall wasn’t functional and diverted a lot of traffic to their neighbor Babloo’z but come day two, they were all in! We ordered The Margherita pizza and it set new standards in what a pizza ought to taste like! The dough was scrumptiously chewy and the tomato sauce and cheese were done just right. No other place was doing pizza right – and this cannot be missed. Way up there on food to eat at Eat. 

 

Red Door – The novel addition of Chicken Pathoora with its crispy, chewy outlook and a great sauce inside was definitely a winner. For those attempting to try something new – you need to knock on this door for sure. 

 

Funky PoP – In July, I suffered from an asthma attack because I made it a point to go try a new popsicle from their outlet in F-10 each evening.  Did that stop me from trying out their Berry Blast at Eat? Hell no! After standing in a long queue for a good 15 minutes, it was just so totally worth it - the popsicle tastes like a burst of wild frozen berries in your mouth! It’s exactly like advertised and is one of the best things this year!

 

Tempura - Slightly more expensive than the rest but also serving up some pretty good seafood, the tiger prawn tempuras were huge and could easily be shared by two and their sauce was spot on! They are also serving up a pretty mean crab gratin but I’ll admit here that I have an instinctive suspicion of seafood in Islamabad and therefore can’t fully enjoy it.

Chattas - These people know how to get desi food just right! We ordered a brilliant saag and makai ki roti from here and couldn’t keep our hands off of it! The saag was creamy, slathered also with desi makhan and the roti was soft, thick and oh-so-tasty. For your desi taste-buds, this shouldn’t be missed. 

Bake for me – Searching for the ultimate meetha while SO many stalls advertised various baked goods was not an easy task. Nothing seemed convincing till we stopped at this stall run by a mother-daughter duo. At Rs.100 for a cookie shot, this is the winner in the desserts category. The cookie glass is delicious and holds hot chocolate that you can eat and drink. What could be better? 

Honorable Mentions that ALMOST made it:

Punjabian Dhabba - Serving up a traditional breakfast of halwa puri, chanay and aloo bhujia. I enjoyed it but wasn’t stunned. It stands as a perfect representation of what average should be.

Shakespeare’s lounge - The food took a while to be made but it was good food. Their chicken taco is weak on the filling but the taco itself is very good. I’d imagine that filled with beef and with the sweet corn removed it could carry more authenticity. The lasagna roll up was also good but chicken lasagna is not really lasagna now, is it? 

Mian Jee -  Obviously the real star here is the daal with paratha. Its exactly like the daal you’d find at the hotel in Mandra. I was happy to eat it but didn’t finish because I was afraid it would fill me up.

The Bad:

Lack of seating – much like last year, the seating was scarce which resulted in multiple people lounging on the floor. It’s okay for the young and sturdy but the old and feeble were duly upset with the seating situation. 

Basil -  Its unfortunate when a food stall is run by genuinely sweet people but the food just isn’t great. We got an average-tasting chicken wrap with salsa and sour cream for Rs. 300 which is way too expensive for a teeny-tiny wrap.  We also tried their star dish, the Thai fish in basil sauce which again wasn’t bad but the overpowering salt and extreme use of raw garlic brought it down from what it could have been. Just a No-No for us. 

Wingitt – Though this was a huge success at last year’s Eat, this time around they could be classified as just BLEH. We’ve possibly been spoilt by Wild Wings and these just didn’t do it for us. They still pulled in a lot of crowd but its wings dipped in watery sauces. I ate mango habernero and honey mustard both of which failed to impress. 

Chair Junction --  You can get a matka chai for Rs. 180 a cup and it’s a very popular place because of instagram. The tea on its own doesn’t have the usual smoky flavor because of the hurry they’re making  the tea in. It is also more expensive than it should be but hey its still chai in winters

The Ugly

No Nearby ATMS – Sure an ATM sounds like a privilege and you should have enough money when you’re out and about but in case you run out of money - you have no way to get yourself any food! Go back home! 

Live Music - Excruciatingly painful to say the least, the festival can do without amateurs attempting to sing because instead of music, what they create can only be categorized as noise!! Don't see the purpose of putting a crowd through the torture....

Dollicious - We got the cookie dough from here and we don’t know what we got. It was some strange concoction of what appeared to be a chunk of Gurr in cream and served with roh afza and sprinkles. Not sure what we ate….

Chai pay - We saw an interesting fusion named pizza gol gappay and guppay shots and jumped to get them! It’s horrid to say but the guppay weren’t crispy, the water wasn’t tangy and the filling was quite bad and went straight into the trash can!

Shakadeli - Advertising itself as the only place in Islamabad selling ‘Ruby chocolate for the first time ‘, we were intrigued but disappointed enough to not finish what was passed off to
us as some magically new red chocolate concoction. The mousse we purchased  was supposed to be red colored chocolate with berry notes which is a category like dark and white chocolate but we’re still unsure of what we ate.

 

Murasaki - I love Sushi enough for my husband to have gotten a special Sushi cake made for me from Murasaki a year ago! But at Eat, they just messed up all that’s glorious about Sushi. The platter, costing Rs.350 is a tiny plate of 4 makis filled with just cucumbers and a bit of tuna paste. I love sushi but this simply wasn’t good.