Arya News - From mango custard to butter chicken, Karachi’s pastry chefs are turning the humble Danish pastry into the city’s most sold-out treat.
KARACHI – Sometimes, it takes a formidable marketing budget and videos of food having a “hero moment” — a chocolate bar breaking to reveal crunchy pistachio kunafe, or a cookie tin being scooped to show luscious chocolate inside — to kick-start a food “trend”. And sometimes, it just happens.
And before you know it, you are one of more than 200 people lined up on a Sunday morning — it’s technically noon, but I had to wake up very early to get here by then — at an artsy corridor in the middle of Habitt City in Karachi’s Tipu Sultan locality.
Test Kitchen’s creamy chicken Danish.
It’s hot. If there are air-conditioners or fans on you can’t feel them. The line is moving slowly, but not a single person is showing signs of leaving.
“Hope they don’t run out of the savoury Danishes,” I hear someone say behind me.
Until that moment, I hadn’t realised that my mind was also trying to shut out the same fear.
From mango custard to butter chicken, Karachi’s pastry chefs are turning the humble Danish pastry into the city’s most sold-out treat
Danish pastries crept up in the Karachi food scene out of nowhere. You’d be hard pressed to find them on a restaurant’s regular menu and they have never been a “viral” moment on Karachi’s social media. And yet, at every food pop-up that happens in the city, the pastries always sell out the fastest.
I am currently at Maryam Motiwala’s food pop-up called The Salted Butter Club. After every five minutes, a person from her team, using a black marker, crosses out an item from the handwritten menu hung up behind the counter. It’s yet another Danish that just got sold out.
What is it about a Danish pastry that has the city in such a fix?
“It is a really smart creation,” says Motiwala, a pastry chef. “You have the flakiness and the richness from the croissant dough and it’s the perfect base, because no matter what you put in it, it will work,” she adds. “Any flavour works.”
The labneh and eggplant pastry at The Salted Butter food pop-up.
Motiwala would know, because it was at her pop-up I discovered a milk and cereal Danish, and also a Middle East-inspired eggplant and labneh (strained yogurt) pastry.
She says that using a simple cream or custard filling in a Danish pastry would, in her view, be letting the pastry down. “I am afraid of making it too basic.”
Tooba Haq, another pastry chef who is known to do supper clubs and pop-ups in the city, agrees. “Karachi already loves croissants, so when you take the same vessel and you can either make it sweet or savoury, there is a lot of room for different flavours,” she says.
Another advantage is that it isn’t a “melty” pastry — the filling remains stable and doesn’t soften or ooze in Karachi’s heat. This makes it perfect for eating on the go, whether you’re running errands or heading to work.
Today, if you venture out to find a Danish pastry in Karachi, you will probably find a fresh mango and custard Danish at popular bakeries such as Springs and Fresh Basket.
At a cafe called Dear Croissant, there is a savoury Danish called spinach and mushroom pastry that is very well-liked. Test Kitchen sometimes keeps a creamy chicken Danish that tastes more like butter chicken, with slightly sweet notes.
However, the reason people line up for them at different pop-ups is because they want to explore newer flavour pairings.
“The curated pop-ups have a specific audience,” explains Haq. “A lot of people who show up are people who travel frequently and who understand the techniques and flavours that go into creating these pastries.”
Newer upscale cafés in Karachi, such as Wildflour, seem to have caught on. So if you go there on a weekend, you can get yourself a mango and sticky rice pastry and a hot dog-inspired Danish pastry — and not just a pastry filled with fruit and custard.
One thing is for sure: this is not just another gimmicky trend. In fact, the popularity of Danishes in Karachi reveals that people are hungry for food that’s quick to eat but still lets them explore new flavours — some reminiscent of travel abroad, others paying homage to home. A mango and custard Danish nods to Pakistan’s seasonal produce; a milk and cereal one is pure childhood nostalgia.
When I ask Motiwala if she has a “dream” Danish pastry that she is yet to execute, she says it’s one using the shareefa [custard apple], which she calls a complex fruit. “I’d maybe use a white chocolate custard filling with fresh shareefa on top. That would be really awesome.”
A simple fruit and custard pastry that pastry chefs fear is ‘too basic’ for Karachi