‘We’re going out for breakfast,” I told my husband and asked if he wanted to join us.
Who’s “we”, he wanted to know.
My parents, my brother’s family and my cousins, I replied.
“No thanks,” he mock-shuddered. “I am not interested in clogging my arteries.”
I went without him. And I think I did clog up my arteries a little. It’s not really a Pakistani breakfast until one does.
Pakistani morning meals are heavy on carbs. American and continental breakfasts have bread, muffins or pancakes; Pakistani breakfasts have paratha or puri.
Fried rounds of deliciousness, paratha is the decadent distant cousin of the naan bread. Both start out as a dollop of dough, rolled into a circle. While the naan goes into the tandoor (clay oven), the paratha gets slathered with ghee or oil, folded and rolled out again before being shallow fried into flaky bread. Puri is made from a different kind of dough and is deep fried. Together, paratha and puri make up the core of the Pakistani breakfast.
“No puri,” the harried waiter shook his head and recited a list of alternates. “Plain paratha, aloo paratha, plain naan, garlic naan, butter naan …”
“But why don’t you have puri?” my mum wailed, distressed at the prospect of not having enough fried goodness to start her morning. “And does that mean you don’t have any halwa either?”
Halwa is a sweet concoction of semolina, sugar and ghee, and is to puri what butter is to corn.
“No halwa,” the waiter muttered and recited more alternates. “Cholay, nihari, paey, kheema …”
We ordered some plain paratha, aloo paratha (paratha stuffed with potatoes), nihari (spicy beef curry heavily garnished with ginger, raw chillies, coriander and lemon), cholay (spicy chickpeas) and paey.
Paey is best described as the oiliest, spiciest, most finger-lickingly delectable Pakistani breakfast food you will ever have, if you can build up the courage to eat cow trotters. Not many people I know have been able to get past the bovine knuckles floating in the masala-laden broth and the way the dish makes your fingers so sticky you have bits of paratha stuck all over your hands. It’s one of those things you can only stomach if you have grown up with it, and even then, only once every few months.
With our constitutions softened by decades of living outside Pakistan, we invariably suffer for a few days after each breakfast binge. It doesn’t stop us from going back every few weeks, though.
If you feel like having a Pakistani breakfast, the two best places in Dubai are B&B Cricket Bar in Oud Metha (04 334 4498) and Ravi Restaurant in Satwa (04 3315353).
B&B Cricket Bar serves an amazing halwa-puri breakfast, but you need to get there by 10am as seating is limited and it fills up fast. It also has the best nihari in town. Rumour has it that it poached the cook from Sabri Brothers – the makers of the best nihari in Pakistan.
Ravi Restaurant is where we went on our most recent trip and it is where you should go for the widest range of artery-clogging breakfast items. Just don’t forget to stock up on a strong antacid.
The writer is an honest-to-goodness desi living in Dubai