First time to eat in the somewhat deserted urbanisation of Bahria Town Karachi (@bahriatownofficial), if I wasn’t so focused on photographing food, I could’ve made a documentary about it! Anyway… I was photographing food as usual because I was at @cafeela , one of the restaurants at Bahria Town Karachi’s Carnival area. As I arrived with an old pak friend of mine who was visiting from Karachi from Australia, I see the big sign “Families Only”, yikes it would be difficult to explain how a white guy was the brother of a Pakistani, but for the saying: “Ask no questions, I tell no lies”, they sold us the 100Rs ticket to let us in to Carnival.
So after a walk around we selected Cafeela just because it they were happily cooking things on charcoals from the outside, and that smell made us interested for more.
Options… I wanted channa chaat for starters which was actually not good at all, it might as well have been a dessert it was so sweet. When we mentioned this to the waiter he did the classic: “it’s supposed to be like that” and we thought he completely dismissed us, but I guess someone more senior came over and at least offered to make it more spicy for us. It didn’t taste any better as they just mixed it up with some green chilli, but at least it became edible.
Mutton Karahi, I did like this but I suggest too much effort was made to garnish it, and the sauce was a little too reduced, I dared not mention this because I expected them just to give me a cup of water and mix it in. Anyway, with some delicious naan it was tasty enough.
So for the half size mixed grill, that was the star really, the meats turned up on a tray which was still continuing to smoke the meats (a nice touch I must add), everything was cooked perfectly and smokey in flavour, good job Cafeela.
And for the dessert, Gajar ka Halwa, this was one of the best I’ve had really, mainly because it wasn’t too sweet and allowed you to pick up some of the carrot taste still, too often this is just the texture to a load of sugar.
So overall, I was a little disappointed as this is held to be the best restaurant in Carnival by a lot of people, however I did enjoy most of it overall.
Cafeela: ⭐️⭐️⭐️🔸
