Bundu Khan and BBQ Tonight in Australia
Food for me has always had very strong emotions attached. Perhaps it’s because I moved so regularly between the two countries I call home (Pakistan and Australia), and when I am in either one, I miss the other one greatly. It may seem like an irrational reaction, considering each one has great food in their own right. But the heart longs for what it’s had in the past and can’t have in the present. The globalization of food has helped remedy this.
It was many years ago that I heard that Bundu Khan was opening up in Sydney, and the Pakistani franchise was being bought across by an ex-Pakistani cricketer. Bundu Khan is an institution, rather than a restaurant. Known for its barbeque, it also has karahis, handis, and other such gravy-based dishes, which the Muslim cuisine of the Indian subcontinent is known for. They also have fantastic halwa puri (the Sunday equivalent of Yum Cha, lamb spit roast, or any other Sunday meal to be enjoyed communally). I wished and hoped that I would get the chance to travel to Sydney to relive my Bundu Khan experiences in Pakistan, but the opportunity never arose.
It was a short while after that, that I was travelling through Darwin, when I noticed the logo of BBQ Tonight. BBQ Tonight is another Pakistani culinary success story, which has taken the country and the world by storm. It has become one of the best-known restaurants to people all over Pakistan and has now spread as wide as the Middle East, and South East Asia. Their story of coming from humble beginnings in Karachi, to becoming a global benchmark for South Asian BBQ, has led to Harvard University case studies, and global food reviews being conducted in their name. It was Darwin of all places, that I came across their most recent venture. Sadly, just like Bundu Khan, it wasn’t to be, as it was an early morning find, with the family flying out a few hours later for another city.
After I moved back to Pakistan in 2013, I started to miss Australian cuisine. What is ‘Australian cuisine’ is widely contested, as apart from the food of Indigenous Australians, the remainder of Australian food is migrant food.
Given all this, what I did miss most were the meat pies. When I first moved to Perth in 1999, we lived next to a shopping center. On the way back from school, we would stop at the shopping center with our mother who was shopping for groceries. There was a café with Italian owners, where my sister and I would sit, allowed to indulge in whatever cost 3 dollars. The steak and kidney pie and shepherd’s pie fit that category, so we grew up on a staple diet of that and flavored milk. It was years later in 2013, when I moved back to Pakistan, that I started asking family members to bring back meat pies. Unfortunately, the long travel distance between Australia and Pakistan meant that frozen meat pies didn’t do too well. We had to settle for family friends bringing them from London instead. Even though they were at times just as good, the sentimental attachments weren’t as strong.
In 2015 when I was travelling through Islamabad for work, I was told an Australian couple had opened up a bakery and coffee bar in Blue Area, one of the major commercial centers, close to the Pakistan Secretariat, and the Diplomatic Enclave. Story has it that two Australian diplomats had opened it up to bring a piece of Australia to Pakistan. When I entered the restaurant, the bakery section with fresh bread baking, the rustic feel, and the distinct latte glasses I had seen growing up in Australia, took me back to my time there. It is now a usual haunt for me when I am in Islamabad.
Admittedly, many of my food adventures have not lived up to my expectations. I never got to try Bundu Khan and BBQ Tonight in Australia, and the meat pies bought home from London were not as fresh and heartening as the ones I had eaten as a child. But they all had memories attached—memories which cut across the two different cultures I had lived in, and were a reminder that food is the great equalizer, and bearer of fond memories, across any culture or cultures.