10th Edition of Karachi Eat Food Festival, which is now known as The Eat Festival concluded week last at the Beach View Park, Karachi. This year’s event had its own highs and lows.
VENUE: On any normal day, if you visit Beach View Park, you will feel like visiting an abandoned place, a neglected park or a vacant space. This park has no green grass (most of the grass that you will see is brown), has litter all around and has too much dust. Despite being located ideally between DHA and Clifton with Arabian Sea on the other side, this park has been in a neglected state for long long time. This park has an entry fee and apart from that authorities of this park charged a whopping amount of 2.5 million on account rental-charges for The Eat Festival. Despite all the income that comes from this park, not much is spent on it.
If organizers of ‘The Eat Festival’, claim to the best or the premium food festival in Karachi, then they shouldn’t ignore finer details. Choosing Beach View Park was one of worst decision to start off with. Organizers have been choosing Beach View Park for quite some time now and each time I have to inform at-least some-one responsible, for choosing a better a venue next time.
First thing that we noticed upon entering the venue was its parking space. That place does not deserves to be called as a parking space at all, I would rather call it an abandoned beach with an un-even ground with no proper hard-surface full of sea-sand and sand-dunes created from sea-sand. We also didn’t see any ushers to guide us for parking nor any security for parked cars. Don’t know how much dust I inhaled. Saw some parents with minors complaining about too much dust. A total disgusting feeling to start OFF with.
EAT FESTIVAL: Upon entering the Eat Festival, first stall that comes up was of National Foods. Excellent stall with a very good tasting ‘Bombay biryani’ and an equally tantalizing ‘tawa chicken’.
To see ‘foodpanda’ stall there was very innovative. It sure was an excellent idea to bring in a food delivery merchant at this event. beverage giant 7-up also a nice and interactive stall. Falak with their free-samples also witnessed large footfall on day one.
One stall ‘Mahigeer’ attracted our attention, as most of us are sea-food lovers and we can easily distinguish fresh catch from the frozen one. We tried their ‘prawn masala’ and among all the eateries that we tried, this was the most disappointing one. I have some serious doubts on jury that had selected some of eateries. Quantity and Quality weren’t upto the mark.
Mezan competed against National Food as one of the biggest stall of this year’s festival. At Mezan we tried their loaded fries and they sure tasted good.
Apart from few big names and some recently established name, most of the stalls were offering low quantity as well as low quality of food. We were told that all the eateries were chosen by a selected jury. We would want to know more about the jury. We have all sorts of low quality options starting from under-cooked, over-cooked, stale etc. etc. Apart from a well-known chapli-kabab stall, most of the meat (beef) I tasted at Eat Karachi was from shelves (shelved-meat) that has been stored in deep-freezers for as long as possible. Beef tasted at the Eat Festival lacked fresh raw natural crispiness.
‘De Calzone’ was too crowded on day one, couldn’t try their stuff, but really wanted to. ‘Sundays ice cream’ had an awesome tasting peach flavor. Lipton introduced four new flavors and their berry felt very refreshing.
Arif Chatkhara House from Lahore with their famous tawa chicken had a deserted look on day-one and had good crowds on remaining two days. Some of them were debating about the prices at this stall, as ‘tawa chicken’ was available at National Foods for half the price.
Some of the stalls full of buzz on all three days were Bombay Wala Zafrani Matka Chai, Punjabian Dhaba, Bullseye Burger, Burger Boss, Churrisity, Pizza Nation, Yellow Taxi Pizza Co, Vlektra Electric Motorcycle, Snace, Momo’s on the Go, Habib, Walls, Wrapped, Sol, Fomo Dumplings and Khouwsa House.
Entertainment area for kids was also well located this time far from main stage, with almost no distraction for little one nor for their parents. Toilets were with water on day one, but it got better on remaining two days.
In my opinion, the best stall of this year’s Eat Festival 2023 was to ‘National Foods’, with their excellent innovative stall, interaction with visitors, excellent desi food (biryani, butter-chicken & tawa-chicken) and the best part was live music at their stall with Khudgharz and Ali Tariq.
SECURITY: Inside the Eat Festival, there was no sign of ushers nor of any security staff. Outside the main gate security staff was seen negotiating with the so called stags (un-accompanied boys) and that was one of the reason why so many of them came and gate-crashed. Security staff (consisting of bouncers, guards and some policemen) was rude all throughout the three days. Can’t say much about the police but you train your bouncers and your guards to be a bit polite and soft. Didn’t see any Rangers anywhere. Last month when Pakistan Cricket Board hosted English Cricket Team, all the security arrangements were handled SSU of Sindh Police. They did a tremendous job, I would highly recommend them.
MUSIC: music was the second best part of this year’s Eat Festival. With Ahmed Godil taking on the role of master of ceremony, first day had Asim Azhar as the show stopper. Second day also had an excellent line-up that included Zeb Bangash and finally Bilal Maqsood as show-stopper.
On third day, we were expecting an excellent show and we will midway through the show with Kaifi Khalil singing his third song, when all came to an end. Gate crashing as heard from many friends and as seen from videos was perhaps one of the worst incident to happen at Eat Festival. I am sure organizers will learn something from this for future events.
CLEANING: To cater 140+ stalls, there weren’t enough trash bins, most of the staff at stalls were seen dumping their trash nearby. Only few trash pickers with trash bags were spotted on day one and they were just transferring trash bags from one place to another within the Eat Festival. You could spot trash bags at many places like the one seen in below picture.
CONCLUSION: Organizers has predicted a footfall of around 40 ~ 50,000 on day-one. For next two days their prediction was 80,000+ for second and 100,000+ for third day. Arrangements weren’t sufficient enough on last two days.
I must clearly say that, Beach View Park is not a suitable venue for an event like Eat Karachi (Karachi Eat Food Festival). Some better options would be like Expo Centre or DHA Golf Club. Both of these venues have ample space for parking, music and stalls.
Identifying above points are just for the sake of improvement only and I must say that will all the bad incidents that happened during the 10th edition of this event, my favorite event in Karachi still remains to be ‘The Eat Karachi (Karachi Eat Food Festival)’ and I will continue to recommend this event to my friends (males only) as this is not a family event anymore. Security lapses will also be seen during next years Eat Festival. Official Statement like the one copied below wont do much, you will have to act more than just giving official statements.
Pictures Credit @karachieat
Kamran Hashim's Blog 