Mad for momos: Pakistan’s first dumplings-only café carves a niche

This photo, taken and posted by Insiya Syed on February 19, 2022, shows fresh steamed dumplings at the Mariyah’s Den café in Karachi. (Photo courtesy: Instagram/@mariyahs_den)

• Maria Mushtaq opened first branch of Mariyah’s Den in Karachi in 2021, she now has two more outlets in Pakistan
• Food critic Ahmer Naqvi says dumplings popular as they “fit into modern life in terms of convenience and fusion”

KARACHI: If by chance you are a lover of dumplings and based in Karachi or Islamabad, then consider this a good time to pay a visit to Mariyah’s Den, Pakistan’s first dumplings-only café.
While Chinese dishes like fried rice, chow mein noodles and chicken manchurian have long been beloved to the Pakistani flavor palate, a taste for dumplings, a globe-spanning culinary trope, has been on the rise in the South Asian city in recent years. This growing taste is what founder and chef Maria Mushtaq was counting on when she started Mariyah’s Den as a delivery service for ready-to-cook frozen dumplings which she made and sold from home in 2020, as people opened up to trying new recipes and dishes during coronavirus lockdowns.
“Then my husband, who is also a partner in this venture, said ‘The way you steam it [dumpling] and the way you make it and serve it in the sauce, it’s very unique, so, you should open a café’,” Mushtaq told Arab News in an interview earlier this month.
The first branch of Mariyah’s Den opened in Karachi in November 2021. Three years later, the cafe has another outlet in Karachi and one in Islamabad as well.
The restaurant serves nine types of dumplings including beef, chicken, lamb, prawn, a combination of prawn and chicken, vegetarian, mushroom and a sweet variety filled with chocolate.
“A lot of people did come up and say, ‘Oh, you’re very brave that you opened a restaurant just on the basis of one dish’,” Mushtaq said. “But I realized that in Karachi, we do have specific places where we go to eat specific foods like nihari and bun kebab so why not dumplings?”
The cafe was a “hit since day one,” the chef added.
“Dumplings as a dish in itself were not that popular a long time ago, but now people do consider that it’s a snack and they like it,” Mushtaq said, explaining that she had tweaked what she thought were the “bland flavors” of Chinese dumplings to Pakistani tastes.
The dumplings at Mariyah’s Den are also served in the sauce, rather than with the sauce of the side.
“Dumplings have been there for a very long time, it’s like a 2000-year-old Chinese dish and dumplings are present in every culture but everyone has adapted it to their own taste and liking,” Mushtaq said. “The Nepalese have their own version, we have mamtus in the mountains [of Pakistan].
Customers also said dumplings were the “perfect comfort food,” filled with both carbohydrates and protein ingredients. Others liked the ease of eating them.
“I think we live in an era of snack foods. Most people like me prefer [dumplings], because it’s instantly available to grab and go,” Mohammad Shams, who was visiting Mariyah’s Den earlier this month, told Arab News.
Ahmer Naqvi, a Pakistani culture and food critic, agreed that dumplings were a comfort food and “very common” across cultures.
“It’s actually one of the oldest and most familiar things going around, like a samosa,” he said, “It is a different dough texture but using the same logic. As a result of globalization, you are seeing a combination of a more Chinese style of the dumplings. It’s more popular now because of the ways it fits into modern life whether in terms of convenience or in terms of fusion.”
Dumplings were also very easy to cook and store, Naqvi added.
For the future, Mushtaq plans to expand her menu but wants to stay true to the cafe’s roots in Chinese flavors.
“We are slowly adding noodles also. So, we have chilly noodles. We have just added a soup bowl, which is noodles with chicken curry,” she said. “I think the genre is just going to be dumplings and we’d just keep on experimenting with that kind of food which is fast, not junk, and it’s very healthy.”