Pakistani food reworked in US
A New Lines Magazine post highlights a new generation in the U.S. redefining Pakistani cuisine through things like naanwiches, desserts and supper clubs. (x.com). The piece points to hybrid formats — street-food riffs and pop-up dining — as a route for cultural and culinary reinvention. (x.com).
Pakistani food in the United States is moving beyond kebab shops in immigrant enclaves and into chopped-cheese counters, chai cafes and dessert pop-ups. (newlinesmag.com) New Lines Magazine reported on April 9 that New York restaurants including Nishaan in the East Village, Kaafi in Harlem and BK Jani in Brooklyn are serving Pakistani-American street food in neighborhoods better known for pizza, tacos and bodegas. (newlinesmag.com) At Nishaan, founder Zeeshan Bakhrani folds chapli kabab spices into a chopped-cheese sandwich and sells dishes like Bihari barbacoa tacos and buffalo tandoori chicken sandwiches. CNBC reported on April 10 that Bakhrani, 34, opened the restaurant after a second layoff and said the business can bring in as much as $140,000 a month. (cnbc.com) Kaafi’s menu lists naanwiches, Kashmiri chai and a gulab jamun doughnut, while Halwa NYC says it has reworked halwa into stuffed cookies, croissants, pies and ice creams. (kaafiny.com) (halwanyc.com) The shift is happening inside a Pakistani American population that Pew Research Center estimated at 680,000 people in 2023, making it the seventh-largest Asian-origin group in the country. (pewresearch.org) For years, Pakistani dishes in the United States were often folded into a broader “Indian” category in restaurant marketing, and New Lines says younger chefs are now pushing for a separate identity through cookbooks, supper clubs and menus that name Pakistani regional flavors directly. (newlinesmag.com) Supper clubs are part of that shift because they let cooks test menus outside the cost and format of a full restaurant. New Lines says hosts are using homes and rented spaces to serve dinners that can look closer to tasting menus than takeout counters. (newlinesmag.com) The food itself is often built from recognizable American formats: sandwiches, burgers, tacos, doughnuts and soft-serve style desserts. The change is less about replacing nihari, halwa or kebab rolls than about putting those flavors into forms that travel easily across New York neighborhoods and social media feeds. (newlinesmag.com) (cnbc.com) Bakhrani told CNBC, “I’m Pakistani, I’m American,” and that line captures the menu logic behind this wave. The point is not to hide the origin of the food, but to name it more clearly while changing the package. (cnbc.com)
