This is the first Village Restaurant opposite Avari Towers and not the Salt n Pepper Village on Seaview that most people are familiar with. It has been around for more than four decades, one of the famous restaurants of the yore. It opened up on the famous Mereweather Road behind Palace Cinema in the 60s proabably owned by the cinema owner. Now it appears just a shadow of its glorious past.

One of our fellow critics fondly remembers visiting Village frequently in his childhood, which was a happening place back then. We decided to have a go at their Ramadan Iftar deals which they religiously come up with every year. Their price goes up every Ramadan just like the rest of the bunch, but is still cheaper than most of the others at Rs.650 which includes the tax, unlimited Roof Afza and tea. The cold drink costs Rs.40.

Judging from its ambience, price point and menu items, it can safely be put in the category of Mela type restaurants. And herein lies its problem. Mela has become such a branded force to be reckoned with in the mid-range category, that no one can compete with it by a long shot. Offering 54 varieties at Rs.449 + tax( which comes out to be Rs.526), it blows away the competition.

Village like Mela is open-air. However unlike Mela whose ambience gives the feeling that you’ve come to attend a wedding (it is located in a defunct marriage lawn) Village fares better on this count. It has a very retro sort of ambience  with greenery aesthetically embedded into the setting which exudes an air of calmness and sooth. Then there’s the candlelight placed on each table which further adds depth to the ambiance. Just be prepared to wrestle with the mosquitoes once the sun sets. Mela on the other hand does not have this nuisance.

Another advantage Village has over Mela is it’s location. Located just across the towering Avari with the defunct Metropole Hotel adjacent to it, it’s not only easily accessible but upscale enough. And this is something which may deter people from visiting Mela. Previously located on Shahrae Faisal opposite the majestic Lal Qila, it is now located smack in the middle of marriage lawns on Main Rashid Minhas Road. Just ask someone from the other side of Kala Pull to come to Mela and his response will tell you exactly what I mean.

Then Mela offers just one glass of Rooh Afza at the Iftar time while Village provides you with unlimited supply of the red sherbet throughout the evening.

One final advantage Village has over Mela is the number of visitors. Village has so few customers that you can easily access all the items whenever you want. Not so at Mela where you have to literally stand in a line if you want to have one of the sought-after items like prawn, fish and barbeque. It’s that crowded.

But that’s just about it. Village lags far behind Mela in terms of items offered. While Village offers a paltry 13 main items, Mela boasts of 20 plus items including the delectable Sajji. Village offers just two desserts, Mela around 10. There were just two salads at Village, Mela has a huge assortment of salads. And don’t forget Mela is Rs.125 cheaper than Village.

In terms of prayer and Wudhu facilities, both of them offer adequate space.

Here’s the complete list of items on offer at Village:

Iftar  Items:

1. Kabuli chana chaat
2. Kala chana chaat
3. Fruit chaat
4. Cream fruit chaat
5. Aaloo ke pakoray
6. Kachori with bhaji
7. Samosa
8. Spring roll
9. Jalebi

Dinner Items:

1. Chicken corn and hot n sour soup
2. Palak ghosht
3. Chicken Karhai
4. Chicken tikka boti
5. Seekh kabab
6. Chinese fried rice
7. Chicken white sauce
8. Chicken chowmein
9. Sweet n sour prawn
10. Chicken red curry
11. Chicken wings
12. Fish n chips

The iftar items were your average stuff. Nothing remarkable about them. The salt content of the kachori bhaji was way too much though.

The dinner items were a mixed bag. The palak ghosht was full of bones with a rare ghosht here and there.

The bbq chicken boti was top notch. Usually what buffet style restaurants do is add a lot of bone-pieces to the platter. Not Village. They had ensured that each piece had succulent flesh to it. The seekh kabab were your standard offering.

The sweet n sour prawn were palatable with enough prawns thrown in to mix. The fish finger was disappointing. The crust was too thick, the pieces too small. The chicken wings were good but you couldn’t tell the difference between the bbq and them. The Chinese platters chowmein and fried rice were pretty much okay.

The chicken karhai was scrummy but we felt that the chicken pieces were not fresh. The nan and kulcha were dry and hard. Biryani is one dish that is present in every buffet big and small and here it was conspicuous by its absence.

The lack of salad and dessert options was a big damper to what overall could have been good value for money. Really, jalebi and gulab jaman alone do not make for a good sweet tooth experience. At the very least they should offer a pudding, a kheer and a kulfi/ice cream. Even one of those items would suffice.

The gulab jamans, by the way, were awesome. The tea, although not the Kashmiri type, was good as well.

At Rs.650, it’s not a bad deal considering that they aren’t many people visiting the place so you can have a peaceful private dinner, with not even the waiters infringing upon your privacy. Which was in a way a drawback. Whenever you went for another helping, your previous plate was still lying around when you came back. Almost all the waiters were huddled together at the back doing God knows what.

So service is a big flaw at Village.

Diner’s is one of the new breed of upscale restaurants that are dotted on the DHA landscape away from the Zamzama crowd, owned by the couple who run Sawasdee nearby.

Located smack in the middle of the Khayaban-e-Shahbaz commercial area, we had been receiving mixed reviews about the place for quite some time. People either loved the place, or hated it altogether. There were no mixed feelings about it. The most common complaint was that the quantity was way too low to justify the prices they were charging.

We decided to check out their Iftar deal and in the process get to know what Diner is all about.

From the outside, it projects an aura of a sophisticated food joint with dimly lit interior offering you the opportunity to dine in ample privacy. From the inside, it’s sophisticated alright, but the privacy part does not hold good as it has a fairly bright lighting which we felt they need to tone down to ensure a more calming ambiance. Overall the ambiance is top notch.

Right, now getting down to the business. This Ramadan most of the restaurants have changed their strategy of offering dinner buffet. Now they offer you an Iftar platter after which you’re allowed to choose just one item from their regular menu. While some restaurants are straightforward about their deal, others are not.

Saffron for instance has claimed to offer Iftar dinner buffet but in reality they’re offering the buffet for just Iftar items and in the end it’s back to just one item from the main menu. Which is pretty steep considering that they charge a staggering Rs.1250+ tax which comes out to be Rs.1463 and that does not include the soft drinks! No wonder the place was deserted even on a Saturday evening. Even the rich this summer are selective about throwing their money away.

Diner on the other hand has gone the traditional way of offering a complete dinner buffet like the category leaders Copper Kettle, Arizona Grill and Roasters. But there’s a catch here. It’s not exactly buffet but ‘Eat all you Can’ in the same vein as Pizza Hut. You’re given a menu and you have to order anything you like and as much as you like from that. Then there’s another catch. You can only do so till 9pm. You would think two hours starting from the time of Iftar would be enough to try everything out. If you’ve been to Pizza Hut’s deal, you know it’s a pretty chaotic scheme.

We got to Diner’s in the nick of time and found the place partially filled; in fact the top floor was pretty much deserted. And yet the service was slow, no, make it excruciatingly slow. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. On that entire floor, there was just this one table occupied (our entry made it two), there were three waiters on the prowl, and yet they couldn’t decide what to do.

Going by the way the waiters were scurrying about excitedly, it seemed Diner’s had for the first time received even this much customers for their Ramadan deal. The Iftar platter which should have been delivered right away along with the dates, was brought six to seven minutes late. To be fair to them, they were all very courteous and it is the restaurant management’s responsibility to direct their activities.

There was no prayer area. They had just designated a miniscule corner for praying that could accommodate only two persons. And the least they could have done was keep proper ‘Jaanamaz’ for that purpose instead of making people pray on large-sized white napkins.

On top of everything, people who were sitting downstairs were coming up to pray in this corner, making it extremely difficult for us to offer our prayers on time. After fifteen minutes had elapsed with no sign of us getting the turn, we asked the waiters to arrange for our prayers in the other corner of the room which had space since the place was mostly deserted even by that time.

Maybe Diner’s hasn’t allocated proper space for prayers because most of their customers don’t offer the prayers after Iftar. That is the only sound logic we could come up with.

We visited the place on the tenth of Ramadan. Why the management hadn’t learnt from its mistakes from the last ten days is beyond us.

Oh, by the way, an appetizer platter  arrived while we were waiting for the prayer turn.

The platter comprised of chicken strips, Buffalo wings and mini beef burgers. The strips were simply divine – chicken with cheese with a thick crispy coating. Buffalo wings are basically deep-fried chicken wings cooked in spicy hot cayenne pepper sauce. They were first made popular by Anchor Bar, Buffalo, New York in 1964, hence the name. The wings were dipped a bit too much in the sauce and they were more sour rather than spicy, but good enough.

The mini beef burger were sumptuous as well but won’t appeal to everyone. If you like your beef heavily marinated in all types of spices and stuff to tone down its authentic smell and taste, then you’re not going to like these. They were the real deal – beef with all its ‘Heeng’ glory.

After this we ordered from the menu which comprised of 12 main entrées along with a host of soups, appetizers and salads, a total of 17 items. The format, as already revealed before, is that you could order any item any number of times, and the total cost of all this is Rs.895+ tax which comes out to be Rs. 1,047.15. You add a further Rs. 75 for a soft drink and that makes it Rs.1122.15. It is pretty steep but considering what the others are offering this year, it’s not a bad bargain.

For the first round we ordered four dishes. The chicken and mushroom crepe was delectable, remarkably similar to the Roasters one. The Fettuccine Alfredo with Prawn, quite a mouthful, the name, isn’t it? Fettuccine (literally “little ribbons” in Italian) is a flat thick noodle made of egg and flour which is wider than the conventional round ones. Alfredo is basically the name of the restaurant ‘Alfredo alla Scrofa’ in Rome. It was named by the Italian restaurateur who owned the place and created this dish back in 1917.

The dish would have got full marks had it not been for the prawns. The prawns we felt were a bit on the stale side judging from the strong smell emanating from it. The pasta itself was palatable.

Next up was the Mushroom steak. We had directed the steak to be well-done. What came out was a small lump of meat which was burnt on the outside and raw from the inside.

The Margherita Pizza was a disappointment as well. The razor thin crust wasn’t so much as a problem than the razor-thin topping. It is named after Queen Margherita of Savoy when she visited Naples in 1889 and was served this pizza resembling the colurs of the Italian flag, red (tomato), white (Mozzarella) and green (basil).

This wrapped the first round. The second round for which we ordered almost immediately took more than half an hour to arrive while the first one arrived within fifteen minutes. This was mind-boggling considering the same type of dishes were ordered the second time around.

The grilled chicken with tarragon sauce was the highlight of this round. Tarragon is a type of herb also called ‘dragon herb’. The chicken was succulent and the sauce sumptuous.

The Penne Arabiata with chicken and tomato sauce was the weakling of this round. Arrabbiata is a Roman sauce of garlic, tomatoes, and red chili cooked in olive oil. In this case, it was simple bland with no distinct taste.

The roast beef sandwich was pretty ordinary as well. The fiesta pizza with chicken fared just marginally better than its Margherita counterpart.

If you look closely at the pictures, the portion size is frugal. If that’s tailored to the Iftar deal so that people don’t waste much, then it’s alright. However, if this same size is served in normal offerings as well, then people have been complaining rightly about it, because at more than Rs.500, you expect the dish to satiate you enough.

In the end we tried the solitary dessert on offer, vanilla ice cream with brownie. The ice cream tasted like one of the popular yet bland brands, the brownie was mediocre although served hot.

Overall, we found Diner’s Iftar deal a mixed bag. It definitely scores a whole lot better than what’s on offer at some of its contemporaries, but the slow service especially the serving of the meals which was to be supposed to be buffet-style should have been prompt. We felt there may have been an element of deliberately stalling for time so that the customer consumes the least amount of dishes in the allocated time till 9pm.

However, if you haven’t been to Diner before and really want to sample their offerings, this deal is as good as any to do that.

Fuchsia is one of the handful restaurants in Karachi offering Thai cuisine. Baan Thai was probably the first one who brought this cuisine to this coastal city and as such still retains the first mover advantage.

Fuchsia has been around for quite some time now and thus can safely be deemed as one of the success stories since surviving on the cutthroat Zamzama street is no child’s play, restaurants have been known to crash and burn on this upscale food hubbub many times before.

We decided to check out Fuchsia’s Iftar deal 2010. Priced at a steep R.995+tax which comes out to be Rs.1164 +soft drink+ tip, it comprises of an Iftar platter, a single main entrée of your choice, a single-choice dessert, and a hot beverage (tea or coffee or green tea). In addition you get a mineral water bottle, a single glass of either lemonade or rooh afza, and a pinch of aab-e-zam zam.

The proceedings kick off with the Iftar platter which comprises of two pieces of chicken on toast, two chicken rolls, two ‘aaloo ke pakoray’, two tiny shrimps, sweet n chili chutney and a palak ka pakora.

Indeed a very sparse platter. On top of that the chicken on toast had so much salt it promised to give a high-blood pressure patient a kill-blow right there on the spot. Although the menu promised a Thai-based platter, it was a pretty much desi platter. We just couldn’t find the Thai angle in it, apart from the two tiny shrimps.

Prayer area was way too insufficient. They had designated their small private dining room for this purpose and there was no segregation of the sexes. Maybe most of the clientele who come for their Iftar deal do not pray hence this   miniscule arrangement.

The main entrée menu was heavily edited compared to their original menu. We felt that Fuchsia could have added a whole lot more items from their main menu considering they’re charging a 1000 bucks for a non-buffet dinner.

And this is always going to be a major problem for all those restaurants that offer a limited dinner set menu instead of the full-fledged buffet at a price that is pretty much the same as that of the buffet. Heavyweights like Copper Kettle, Arizona Grill and Roasters are offering an iftar buffet dinner at Rs.1000. So when you have to compete against this sort of offering from the giants that are literally across the street from you, you better come up with something special.

In this regard, we feel Fuchsia really lets its customers down.

So, coming back to their main entrée menu which was heavily curtailed, we picked three items from the 10 items on offer:

• Green Curry Chicken with Baby Eggplant & Sweet Basil Leaf
• Wok fried prawns with sweet basil and oyster sauce
• Crispy fried fish with tangy Thai tamarind sauce

Here’s their original menu.

Along with these dishes, plain white rice were served as many times as you want. Not that you want them much, because they were over-cooked, more like a rice-paste or halwa. Maybe it’s Thai style.

The fried prawns were good, the big succulent type that people relish. The quantity can definitely be improved upon considering the price of the deal.

The fish was alright, cooked in a sauce which lacked a distinct taste.

The green curry chicken was the biggest sore point of the evening. Maybe Thais love this kind of stuff, none of our party took to it. The curry was way too strong, reeking of coconut essence, the sort of curry you get along with Masala Dossa.

The dessert, again Fuchsia offers 8 choices of desserts but in the Iftar deal they have confined themselves to just one: chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream. Although both the cake slice and ice cream (homemade) were delectable, the quantity issue reared its ugly head again. See it for yourself.

The tea was your usual tea-bag stuff. Nothing Thai or anything special about it.

Service was prompt and up to the mark. No shortcomings there. The family at the table next to us, however, were not satisfied with something. The only thing we overheard of their complaint was something about freshness.

Although Fuchsia had quite a few customers coming in, if it is to scale the height of success its neighbors have done, it will have to reposition its offerings.

One thing it could do is instead of offering just one main entrée, offer them the choice of three or four different items which would arrive in a big thal with small bowls loaded with these dishes. That way, the customers will have the satisfaction of having had a sort of mini-buffet. The second equally important benefit this would have is that a customer won’t get stuck with a single entrée that he doesn’t enjoy, which is more likely to happen in the current deal.

Fuchsia’s forte at the moment is its ambiance which is smashing even by Zamzama standards. Head over to Karachi Snob where you can find snapshots of the place as well as the menu items in detail.

We recommend this place only for those who already have an affinity for Thai cuisine.

Gun Smoke continues to provide stiff competition to its competitors Arizona Grill and Copper Kettle with its wide array of burgers and steaks.

And Gun Smoke’s reputation has become bigger than the actual product behind the brand, which is precisely what brands are created for – to charge brand premium for the larger-than-life perception.

The biggest reason for this is that Gun Smoke has managed to cultivate more brand evangelists than its competition. These brand evangelists have not only joined the Gun Smoke Facebook page in droves (16,000+ todate), they have created video ads of Gun Smoke and uploaded them on youtube. Here are three of them:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cvJ6REkOI

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIlPBkuYIJM

Now they may not be the most sensational ads you’ll ever see, but these ads are made by ordinary people who love this brand so much that they’ve put in the time and effort to create them. How many of Gun Smoke’s competitors can boast of this?

Consistency is  the second  most potent weapon of any powerful brand and Gun Smoke has it.

If you’ve been to Gun Smoke, you must be familiar with their menu pattern.  The basic offering of the main entrée remains the same, the only thing you change is the choice of meat – chicken or beef, and the item itself – burger or steak.

For instance, if you choose Mediterranean Garlic, you can have burger or steak in that particular recipe and within that category, beef or chicken. Confused? It’s like this:

1. Mediterranean Garlic Beef Burger or
2. Mediterranean Garlic Chicken Burger or
3. Mediterranean Garlic Beef Steak or
4. Mediterranean Garlic chicken steak

That means for every single recipe there are four combinations.

In the case of sandwiches and pasta, the scheme is a bit different.

Here’s the complete menu.

In this visit we tested four of their offerings: Mediterranean Garlic Steak (Beef), Whiskey River Steak (chicken),   Royal Burger (Chicken) and Gourmet Cheese Burger (Beef).

Whiskey River bbq steak-- Gun Smoke

Mediterranean garlic beef steak- Gun Smoke

Although Gun Smoke’s steaks are pretty much renowned, taste-wise you would be hard-pressed to differentiate them from Copper Kettle, Arizona Grill, Roasters or even Secret Recipe.

Portion-wise you are going to end up disappointed. Gun Smoke could do a whole lot better in offering generous portion sizes like its rivals. While the rivals offer generous helping of vegetable, garlic sauce and French fries, Gun Smoke offered spinach. Can you believe that? Who would want to have that with steak? How does that work? (“Hey honey look, these fine cowboys are so concerned about our health they’re giving us spinach!”)

Maybe some people do fancy creamed spinach, none from our party did. A better strategy is to offer options, something that doesn’t require any extra effort on their part, like buttered sweet corn or grilled vegetables, something they’re already offering with other menu items.

To be fair, we didn’t try the Sheriff’s Cut category, which we reckon is just the super-sized version of the existing steaks. Maybe taste-wise they’re different as well. At almost 1000 bucks, they better be all that and more.

Most people say that taste (especially that of the steaks) is the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of Gun Smoke. We found out that the salad bar option with each steak  is the real USP. At second comes the ambiance which the youth especially have taken a liking to.

No rival of Gun Smoke has come up with the salad bar, which is fast becoming the in-thing in this part of the world. Although many restaurants have come up with a salad bar, apart from Pizza Hut no one has been able to leverage it in the form of deals as Gun Smoke has done.

However, it would be better for Gun Smoke to allow the customer to have the salad with the dinner and not before it. What happens is that you’ve the salad 10 minutes before the steak arrives, and by then your expectations have risen to quite an extent that when you see just the potatoes or spinach, it makes for a sorry site.

Just imagine how potent the whole deal would look if the salad bowl is placed along with the steak? It would enhance the worth of the whole deal.

Coming to the burgers, they are no more tastier than most of the rivals, but at least portion-wise they are right up there with the competition. One burger ought to satiate your appetite well, what with the generous helping of French fries, coleslaw and the humungous burger itself.

The coleslaw is a bit too crispy with sparse use of mayonnaise whereas Karachiites are weaned on the pasty softer version.

Gun Smoke has done a pretty swell job of building a strong brand. But it still need to tie the loose ends if it is to become a great brand loved not only by Pakistanis  but people abroad.

The pathway to greatness has already been defined in the earlier article Gun Smoke- The Resilient Brand. What can be added to that strategy is that Gun Smoke will have to upsize the portion size of the steak, add more sizzling sidelines to them, and then offer some scintillating deals to maintain the flow of consumers throughout the week.

That is one weakness of Gun Smoke. On some days of the week, the place is pretty deserted which doesn’t do any good to the brand equity especially if a first-time customer walks in. Introduce something along the lines of Purple Haze’s Ladies Only Night on Tuesday where pretty much everything can be had at 50% discount!

Of course Purple Haze is not of the same caliber as Gun Smoke but even then it ought to be willing to try Haze’s strategy if it’s effective. The aim should be to drive traffic to your place even if that means cutting your profit margin a bit.

Gun Smoke has also introduced breakfast deals in line with the prevailing trend of the upscale restaurants. And those deals are prominently displayed on the table. However, the deal itself is not that appetizing. Not many people are going to throng the place for a mere egg with steak at a price that is pretty much the same as the dinner’s. Gun Smoke will need to come up with better deals if its customers are to be tempted out of their bed on a holiday morning.

Roasters’ Burgers are the biggest you’ll ever see in this part of the world. You’ll notice these humungous objects from far off as the waiter approaches with them. It doesn’t get bigger than this. And if you can’t satiate your appetite with one of these, then you need to get your stomach examined.

We tested two of their fast food offerings- Caesar Chicken Sandwich and Chicken Bacon Royal. Funny thing is, even if you order a sandwich, it invariably comes out to be a burger as in the case of Caesar chicken sandwich.

The chicken Caesar sandwich, well, if you’re into mild stuff, you’re gonna love this. It’s devoid of any strong essence. Just your crunchy romaine lettuce entwined with a healthy slab of very mildly grilled chicken with a price tag of Rs.395. We would have recommended this meal as a diet had it not been oozing with mayonnaise. Overall a very subdued offering, but enough to satiate your appetite.

The Chicken Bacon Royal Burger’s description promises to give you a heart attack, what with golden crisp chicken on top of which sit bacon strips and mushrooms and even garlic mayo. We went for that option but were disappointed not to get a heart attack. Reason being, there’s still ample room for improvement (read filling). The chicken patty was a bit too thin, and the bacon strips could have been more generously stuffed, especially at a hefty price of Rs. 395. Nevertheless it’s good stuff to sink your teeth into.

Chicken Bacon Royal

The fries content was more than sufficient in all meals.

However, it’s the lack of coleslaw or some other worthy sideline like garlic sauce that is the main drawback of

Roasters’ burger offerings. On the face of it, it may not appear to be that big a deal, but when you consider that all the competitors are offering  generous helpings of either coleslaw or garlic sauce with their burgers, you need to wake up to that reality.

But it’s not the real reason that Roasters should start offering these sidelines. The thing is, the Pakistani consumer got spoilt by the earlier snack-walas who started offering these delicacies along with the main entrée, and the trend was continued by their successors.

The result: whenever a Karachiite orders a burger no matter where, he always expects something extra other than the main attraction. And if he doesn’t get that extra stuff, no matter how delicious the burger, he always feels disappointed that something is amiss.

One other major reason especially for

Roasters is that since their buns are gigantic, the patty inside sometimes is unable to compete with it for size, which essentially means that some portion of the bun is invariably going to be empty.

Now, if you’re not offering any pasty sideline, what is the customer going to dip his empty bun into?

Pizza Hut came with the novel solution of filling the crust ends with either cheese or sometimes even seekh kabab, and that strategy proved to be quite successful. While

Roasters can’t offer that option, it can certainly make do with the earlier solution of coleslaw.

And that is the only real shortcoming of

Roasters’ burgers. Otherwise they are the very best you’ll find in town at a price that is pretty competitive.

Chicken Cottage is probably one of the worst foreign franchises ever to hit the Pakistani shores. Hailing from the English shores, it maybe a popular brand at home but here the way it is being handled and the standard of its competitors, there’s no way it would survive for long.

In fact it has already taken a hit when it was forced to close down its very first joint in Hyderi due to dismal sales.

Now it has opened shop on the famous Johar Mor in Gulistan-e-Jauhar.

Marketing wise it is doing quite well. In fact the only reason it has survived this long is probably because of its marketing rather than the product itself. When it first launched in Hyderi, it spent a fortune on billboards and banners plying the main roads and flyovers in that entire district, playing on its English roots.

The joint did a roaring business in the days immediately after the launch. However, after a while, the euphoria died down and the only thing remained in its wake was the report that Chicken Cottage was expensive and awful, a poor substitute for KFC.

No doubt the place closed down. The Johar joint had a good launch strategy as well, what with 20% discount on the first three days and a clown hanging outside to woo the children. And the strategy was working well because the place was getting some foot traffic.

However, a marketing strategy can only take you so far. You need to have sound management to make things work.

Here’s an example of how they went terribly wrong:

On the second day that we visited, when the lights went out courtesy the scheduled loadshedding, the generator worked for a few minutes and then everything was shrouded in darkness. When the eerie darkness remained for more than 10 minutes, we inquired what was wrong, and the meek reply came that the generator was out of petrol.

By the time the petrol arrived, we had managed to grapple successfully with our food but were completely drenched in sweat. The justification given was that because they had just opened, things were still a little out of place.

Imagine a UK-based fast food franchise. How could they not prepare for the loadshedding especially when it is on schedule now and they had already ample experience of Karachi market by operating in Hyderi. This is something totally inexcusable.

And if this was not enough, the food was remarkably mediocre and exorbitantly priced.  We tried their Mountain Burger, the Fish Fillet and the Quarter Pounder.

First, the Mountain Burger. It was supposed to be a double-decker of sorts with a crispy chicken patty on top of which sat a chicken fillet patty.  In reality, we were hard-pressed to find the other patty, it was that small. The crispy part was so dry that it felt like we trudging through the Sahara desert instead of munching on a crusty burger. We tried to counter the dryness with the soft drink but the drink was an ordeal in itself. It tasted more like the soft drink that they sell on the thela in which they pump gas of their own.

Then came the Quarter Pounder, which they claim to be made of lamb instead of beef. It tasted like beef and was the better of the other two. However, the size does not justify the price. At Rs. 299, you better make the meal (burger+ fries+drink) fulfilling enough which it wasn’t.

The fish fillet was another disappointment. It tasted more like almond than fish. Again the size did not justify the price of Rs.270.

Bad Service, Mediocre Taste, and Outrageous Price – this pretty much sums the brand essence of Chicken Cottage. If it is to rise above the competition, it will have to do a whole lot more than what it is doing now.

Our prediction is that it’s not going to last for long.

Copper Kettle is the father of the ‘cafesque’ restaurant category in Karachi’s foodscape. Pre-Copper Kettle, Chinese restaurants ruled the roost followed by a few Usmania-style restaurants. With the advent of Copper Kettle, the whole scenario underwent a paradigm shift.

With competition in this category heating up, Copper Kettle has responded with diversification and expansion. The diversification strategy culminated in the creation of a new brand Hobnob – a bakery which serves most of the dessert delicacies of the parent brand. The expansion strategy has been much more subdued with just a single other outlet operating in Karachi on National Stadium road.

Although the prices at this joint are the same as the original one on Zamzama, some innovation has been introduced into this joint to make it more appealing. And that innovation is a buffet dinner on the first floor whereas the A la carte version is maintained on the ground floor.

We didn’t try the buffet version but the grapevine has it that it’s nothing to write home about. But then, what can you expect from a buffet that costs a mere Rs.500 at an upscale joint? We did check out the items on the buffet, and although there aren’t that many to begin with, whatever items they do offer look to be good value for money.

We went for the A la Carte version and apart from their usual items, we decided to have a go at their desi offering as well.

The desi item we did try – BBQ platter – was alright, nothing spectacular that you would expect from CK. It comprised of two large seekh kababs and an assortment of behari kabab,bihari boti and chicken boti. The nans that were served with it were horrendous. It would have been better had they served paratha or even chapathi with it.

Henny Penny-chicken stroganoff

The fried shrimps weren’t any good either. In fact when you consider the price and the comparison with Arizona Grill and Roaster’s Battered Fried Shrimp, it would pale in comparison. Its biggest drawback was that the crust was too thick reeking of ‘bason’ and overshadowing the taste of the core ingredient- the shrimp. Simply the worst item that we ordered on this visit.

BBQ Platter -Copper Kettle

The Henny Penny (Boneless chicken stroganoff in fresh cream and mushrooms, served with  fried rice) was as usual brilliant but the quantity was a bit on the down side.

Jumbo Prawns-Copper Kettle

The Chicken Chuck was good as well with just the right amount of stuffing, remarkably similar to what is on offer at Secret Recipe. Quantity-wise it topped the list.

Chicken Chuck-Copper Kettle

The Caked Alaska wasn’t upto the mark either. Presentation-wise it was right up there but the brownie/cake didn’t have the usual brilliant taste. On top of that the ice cream was melting like hell and we had to plunge into it at full speed before only the milk remained. At Rs.230 plus tax, you expect better than this.

Caked Alaska-Copper Kettle

Overall, this outlet seems to have something amiss with respect to the original joint. The taste wasn’t quite there nor was the quantity. Is it a deliberate ploy or just some operational shortcoming isn’t clear.

Whatever the shortcomings, the joint itself is doing good business. It’s neighbor Domino’s had a terrible time with the place deserted most of the time. It eventually moved from there to the happening strip of University Road adjacent to the Pizza Hut.

Marketing-wise Copper Kettle is following the standard format – have a facebook page with all the offerings of the brand including hi-resolution pictures of the items, and then offer special promotion deals from time to time specially for the lunch time when business is slowest.

And Copper Kettle is doing well here what with 10,667 fans as of writing this review. The page and the strategy was developed by Shahjehan Chaudhary’s Homexpress which is responsible for most of the upscale restaurants’ social media strategy.

It is an effective strategy which works for most restaurants making use of it although it can backfire a bit as well like it did for CK when someone complained on their facebook wall about the quality of caked alaska being offered on the special deal.

But at least they’re getting the feedback in real time, and if they’re serious about maintaining their quality, they will pay heed to the comments emanating online.

Lahore, akin to Karachi, is not well known for upscale ice cream parlors. Maybe the packaged ice cream brands have done a remarkable job of keeping the consumer demand for the category satiated, maybe the Pakistani consumer doesn’t fancy ice cream as much as he fancies the halwas and the mithais, or maybe there’s a tremendous vacuum in this category and there’s no shrewd marketer to realize this opportunity.

In any case, both these mega cities fair poorly in this category.  In the category just below it, the one-size-fit-all ice cream parlor which tries to be everything to everyone, the track record of these two cities is not that bad. But even here, monopolistic trends reign supreme. For instance, when you say Lahore, the ice cream brand that is top-of-mind (apart from the packaged Yummy) is Chaman. Value-wise, this is equivalent to Baloch Ice Cream in Karachi, but while Baloch has a number of outlets all over Karachi, Chaman has just three in Lahore. And while Baloch has a strong competition, Chaman is almost a monopoly over there.

And now Chaman has arrived in Karachi. It started off with a fairly average launch, concentrating mostly on billboards to announce the arrival with no special deal offered on the launch, in fact no USP whatsoever. What it did do extremely well is get hold of ideal locations, both from the point of view of the target market and the number of members of the target market frequenting the area. It has opened two shops, one at Tariq Road near KFC, the other at Boating Basin.

And yet the place is not doing as well as it does in Lahore, in fact not as good as any good ice cream parlor ought to do.

But why? One of the major reasons is that the Chaman owner thought that it was already a well-established brand in Lahore and that the people of Karachi would know about it, even having tasted it on their visits to Lahore. Unfortunately for the Chaman guy, this assumption didn’t work.

Secondly, Chaman is charging a somewhat premium price of Rs. 50 per two scoops, again probably having the line of thinking that it is already an established brand and can charge whatever it wants. It’s strongest competitor, Baloch Ice Cream, has priced the same cup size at Rs. 35-40 depending upon the flavor.

Yes, there’s nothing wrong with charging premium pricing but you do need to be able to justify it. Chaman should definitely have done some brand activation, even reminding people of the rich heritage of Chaman in Lahore. It didn’t do that. It just put up a few billboards and they also give the impression that it was a new shop and not the king brand of Lahore.

The result is for all to see. Both the outlets are fairly deserted most of the time in spite of the fact that they are located at prime spots of Karachi.

Finally, the lackluster performance of Chaman is to an extent related to its taste. Although it has quite a number of flavors, more than most of the competitors, the taste itself is not that unique. It could be a case of Karachiites not liking the Lahori taste. It could be a case of Karachiites already having tasted similar tastes in other parlors at a much lower cost. That’s a disadvantage Chaman has in Karachi, a city which offers the ice cream consumer a plethora of choices in terms of prices and taste. It’s like being a big fish in a small pond to suddenly becoming a small fish in a very large ocean, although Lahore is no small pond by any stretch of the imagination, in this case it does.

When we tested five of their flavors – strawberry,vanilla, banana, pista and tutti fruit, they tasted more like the packaged ice cream brands rather than the handmade brands. And yes, that is a disadvantage. On top of that, Chaman doesn’t offer any toppings or cone options, a feature which has become a perquisite for any ice cream parlor in Karachi in this category.  They do have their sundaes and other similar desserts though.

So what can Chaman do to turn things around in Karachi?

The cheapest option would be to go for a social media strategy, targeting youth havens Facebook and Twitter. If that’s not possible, then go the traditional way of creating and distributing flyers. But what do the flyers proclaim? Just making flyers about the brand and its location is not going to cut it. What Chaman needs is to come up with innovative ways of offering its ice cream. Buy 1 get 1 free on the slowest night or day. Eat all you can ice cream option at an extremely affordable rate.

Most restaurateurs would balk at the idea of an ice cream parlor offering buffet. But why not? If you have a number of flavors, nothing should be stopping you from offering the buffet option. How much can the consumer eat anyway? A dozen scoops at the most. Just look at the positive side. Your ice cream would start turning over, meaning you don’t have to throw away the half your lot just because it didn’t get consumed. Then you’ll know which flavors the target market is favoring, and then position your offering accordingly.

Come up with innovative flavors. Chocolate cum vanilla, or vanilla chips, a tactic which Hot Spot excels at and which plays a major part in its popularity.

These two options represent just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of things that Chaman can do to enhance its brand equity in Karachi without having to change the original recipe. But sitting on your butt expecting the brand to lift off on its own without any push is a sure recipe for disaster.

chaman consumerater

Roasters started out as a coffee house but then popular demand by the regular clientele forced the owner Nadeem Raja to introduce main entrées into the foray, as revealed by him to Mahmood Nanji on the program Success Stories.

With time, Roasters has morphed into a full-fledged restaurant with the coffee business confined to a mere sideline option.

If you’re familiar with most of the upscale restaurants in town including Roasters, you will notice Roasters has an uncanny resemblance to one particular joint. In fact most of the items on display are identical. That place is Arizona Grill and the reason is both joints are owned by Nadeem Raja.

Wouldn’t that lead to cannibalization of sales? To an extent, yes. Fortunately, they are not located that close to each other, although all the four joints are in the same locality, two at Zamzama and the other two at Bahadurabad and Sindhi Muslim Society.

The most similar dish and probably the best item on both restaurants’ menus is the Battered Fried Shrimp. Heavenly stuff, these shrimps.  The surprise element was the price. At Arizona Grill, this dish costs almost Rs.600 whereas at Roasters it is priced less than Rs.500! Talk about brand premium. There’s literally no difference in the taste, quantity or even in the presentation, apart from the garlic sauce that is served with Arizona version but is absent in the Roasters version.

Roasters- Battered Fried Shrimp

There are of course, differences as well. Crepe is one of the specialties of Roasters but nowhere to be found in Arizona Grill.

The quantity, well, Arizona Grill fares a wee bit better on this aspect than others.

We tested five of their main entrées, and found their sumptuous factor to be remarkably high compared to their contemporary restaurants. The Onion and Pepper Chicken was the worse of the lot, and even that wasn’t all that bad. The chicken itself wasn’t badly done, there was the strange sprinkling on top that spoiled the whole dish.

The chicken waffle is a bold dish for two reasons. One, waffle is not something that is known amongst the Pakistani consumer, let alone be popular amongst it. Secondly, waffle is mostly used as a morning or evening snack; on top of that it is slightly sweet. Our consumer may have become accustomed to the red-sauce sweet-and-sour chicken and prawn and what not, getting used to waffle may take time or may not happen at all. It’s bound to become popular only if more and more eateries start serving it.

Roasters- Chicken Waffle

The Roasters’ chicken waffle was alright, nothing extraordinary. We felt that the waffle itself could have been done a whole lot better. It should have been soft but was quite hard.

The solitary beef burger on the menu was not only tasty but humongous. It ought to satiate the appetite of even the ‘healthiest’ of eaters.

The two crepes that we tried were simply divine. Even the now defunct Crepe Factory couldn’t come up with this level of’ scrumptulicious’.

The pasta was the second best thing on the menu, with just the right amount of spices and herbs used to accentuate the flavor.

Both the joints, Zamzama as well as Sindhi Muslim Society, were checked out and the ambiance, service and food were found to be remarkably uniform. Service was good enough, although at the Sindhi Muslim outlet when we ordered different forms of potato with different dishes, we got only the French fries with each one. Minor glitch.

The privacy factor could be jacked up a bit, although it’s far better than others of its kind especially at Zamzama.

It’s marketing strategy is a little bit subdued. They have come up with the standard lunch deal which most of the upscale restaurants are following diligently – buy one and get the other at 50% off. However the way this promotion is presented at all restaurants including Roasters – “50 % off Lunch Deal”, it gives the impression that you would only be required to pay 50% on your total bill. A bit deceptive, especially since the actual deal doesn’t offer that much of a difference in the total bill.

Why? Many reasons. For one, the GST is not included in the waiver. Then the deal is valid for only the main entrée. Any appetizer or dessert you order will be charged at full price. And the biggest of all, you need to order even number of main entrees to be eligible for the meager discount. If you order 3 or 5, only one dish would be eligible for the discount.

And herein lies an opportunity for some shrewd restaurateur to tinker with the terms of the deals and make it more attractive than what the rest of the bunch is offering. How?

Include even the starters and desserts within the deal. Then if a customer orders three or five dishes, offer a 25% discount on the odd one out. And if someone is bold enough to order seven dishes, how about the eighth one completely free? These small measures have the potential to tilt the level playing field in the favor of the restaurateur who implements them, that is if, someone is bold enough.

A great opportunity which almost all restaurateurs fail to take advantage of is offer tantalizing deals on the slowest day, which for most is Monday nights. Gun Smoke is one shrewd place which is offering Eat All You Can deal on a Monday night although the deal is a bit too stifling. Then Aqua Lounge is offering a Crab Buffet on Monday night. Although not a bad idea, but who would have a crab-only buffet on Monday of all the nights, and that also for Rs.1000+ tax?

That’s literally creating a barrier for anyone even remotely interested in that deal. So what gives?

Your deal has to be too good to be true, yes it has to be that irresistible, even if it means you don’t make any profit on it. After all your purpose is turn the slowest night into the fastest one, to make sure that the place is thronging with people and people are falling over each other to get their hands on that deal. What this would do is stir a commotion and spread like wildfire. No one to date has been able to conjure up this sort of hysteria on a slow night, weekend yes but not when the going is tough.

Coming back to Roasters, apart from this one deal, there’s no deal, advertising or brand awareness strategy by them. All the branding endeavors are internally driven. They don’t even have a Facebook page which is a major shortcoming considering that almost the upscale joints maintain a regular presence there, interacting with their customers, offering new deals and basically just keeping in the thick of things. It’s even more bizarre since the sibling brand Arizona Grill does have a major presence on facebook with more than 12,000 fans.

Although there’s a group by its name, it’s probably created by a fan and doesn’t have much to offer, not even the menu.

All in all, Roasters has done tremendously well to rise up to the first-tier upscale restaurants from being a mere coffee shop, competing with the category leaders, leaving even the parent brand Arizona Grill behind.

‘I’m the owner of three satellite channels and I had a very bad experience at your restaurant. Your staff is very rude and I have made video of your place with my mobile and I intend to show this on my channels’.

This was the latest entry on the comments book at the front desk of Rangoli, the buffet joint that has managed to inch towards the top 3 buffet restaurants. The person hadn’t written his name but had given his cell number, which is a bit strange. Rangoli has established itself as a major player on the buffet scene which is paradoxical to this complaint. If the customer service of a company, especially that of a service provider sucks, then there’s no way it can become a top player. And yet Rangoli is still climbing the charts.

Maybe this complaint was a one-off case, but then our own experience wasn’t swell either as far as dealing with the desk staff is concerned. This would be revealed later in the article, but first the good things.

As far as the sensory branding strategy is concerned, Rangoli has really made inroads, making full use of 3 out of total 5 five dimensions, namely, sight, sound and taste. It would do well to integrate the other two dimensions (touch and aroma) as well.

The first thing that hits you (after dealing with two sullen fellows at the desk guaranteed to piss you off) is the pleasing ambiance. Although the food hall is brightly lit, the dining hall is dimly light with spacious seating arrangement and enough space between tables to allow sufficient privacy. A balanced privacy in a public place such as a restaurant is an important factor which many restaurants especially those at Zamzama choose to ignore. Rangoli has done justice to this factor.

Then in line with the brand essence of Rangoli, there’s the desi live music with tabla and harmonium and all. What’s interesting is they are rendering the latest Indian songs in the traditional folkloric style, imbibing the senses with a soothing effect.

Coming to the food items, first the salad bar. Unlike Village and Lal Qila, Rangoli has come up with a comprehensive salad bar with all the standard items and more. At Village and Lal Qila, you couldn’t even find the coleslaw, an item that has really hit off with the masses.

The second differentiating factor is the prawns. Prawn and fish are two items that you are almost certain to find in all buffet restaurants irrespective of whether they are desi or continental. However, the way they are cooked varies from restaurant to restaurant. The Tempura style is increasingly becoming popular for the prawns, and you’ll find it at both Village and Rangoli. However, Lal Qila and Shan-e-Mughlia are still stuck on the desi style of basun smeared prawns which isn’t as good as the tempura.

The third differentiating factor is the Sajji. Although Mela does offer it and it’s as good as the Rangoli one, Mela doesn’t belong in the league of these upscale buffet restaurants. In this league, there’s no one else offering the Sajji.

Then there are a number if minor plus points, like the pasta which is cooked right then and there for you and was by far the best dish amongst the plethora of offerings.

Like Village, Rangoli isn’t big on barbeque items, offering just two- chicken boti and seekh kabab. However, both were good enough with succulent chunks of chicken on offer. On the other hand, Lal Qila excels at this cuisine offering a number of diverse bbq items.

One of the minor shortcomings of Rangoli is the division of the food hall into two areas. The problem is that the second smaller section which holds a slew of delectable items like Sajji, Mutton Roast, Pasta, Chicken Handi and Pani Puri is obscurely located with no sign pointing towards it. What’s more, you couldn’t see into that room because the view is blocked by a frosted glass door! We noticed it only after we had moved onto the desserts.

The beef pasta was a pleasant surprise as not many buffet restaurants are able to make this properly. The fried rice were too ordinary. There’s the chowmein missing which has also become part and parcel of most desi buffet dinners. There is however the spaghetti which is alright.

Apart from the afore-mentioned dishes, no other dish on the menu is worth discussing. That’s because they are pretty much what every other buffet dinner offers with no great taste. There’s the nihari, karhai, haleem, Anda Chana, fried rice, thai fish and a number of other items with no great taste.

In the dessert section, although the ice cream on offer had only one flavor – vanilla, it was quite delectable. It wasn’t one of those tasteless ice cream brands which you find at most restaurants but a homemade specialty. Apart from this, the other items more or less the standard affair.

Now we come to their customer service part and why that owner of three satellite channels may have been rightly pissed off. When we arrived at the place at about 8.45pm, we were ushered into the dining hall with the warning that the first shift was going to end at 9.30 pm and that we better hurry up. We were taken aback and asked the head waiter how could he expect us to wrap up the dinner in less than an hour, and that also a buffet one?

What did he say? Okay, we could stay half an hour more but then we should remember taking care of him at the end. Sounds familiar? For all it could have been our policewalas asking for a bribe politely.

We went back to the counter, asked for the dinner+ bowling game deal where we would play first and then come back in the ‘second’ shift where there would be no time constraints. Now, here’s the best part. The guy at the counter refused to reserve seats for us even though we were paying him in advance to book the seat. His audacious reply – that the place gets full by the time we would come back and that they couldn’t risk even a small table lying vacant when it could be earning money by accommodating a customer!

That’s the worst reply you can give to your customer, that the next money making opportunity is more important than the present customer, that he’s no more than a money-minting opportunity. Well, in reality that is the case but you don’t bluntly say it to his face.

No wonder the three-satellite owner guy was pissed off, something similar surely must have happened to him.

It wasn’t just what the desk clerk was saying but his entire body language gave the impression that he didn’t give a damn about the customer, what he only wanted to achieve was filled tables. Period.

Although customer service is not the most promising aspect of any Pakistani business, the utter disdain for your customer is something which is seldom witnessed. With this sort of attitude, Rangoli is surely going to suffer in lean times in spite of all its competitive advantages.