A popular border restaurant featuring Indian and Pakistani cuisine and the idea of peace between both countries will feature its cuisine at a prestigious international food event in Paris next month.
‘Sarhad’ (meaning ‘border’ in Urdu and Hindi) restaurant in India, located just one kilometer from the Attari-Wagah joint checkpost of India and Pakistan, promotes peace through food with its Amritsari-Lahori cuisine and culture. It is one of the ten restaurants invited from across the world been to participate in the Grand Fooding S. Pellegrino Plats in Paris, reports India Abroad News Service (IANS).
Billed as the world’s biggest food event, the festival is organised by the restaurant guide and gastronomic events company Le Fooding, in partnership with the bottled water company S. Pellegrino. Previous partnerships include “Cook it cool!”, November, 2014, and “All in the bistro”, November, 2015.
Painted by Pakistani truck artist Haider Ali and his team, the “India-Pakistan” vehicles at Sarhad are a great draw.
This year’s festival, billed to take place on September 24, is titled “Resistance Dishes”, and features an “international cast of chefs” from London, Lebanon, various areas of France, New York, and Brazil, aiming to celebrate togetherness.
Top international chefs and restaurateurs with a similar mission, to use food as a medium for peace and reconciliation, will present essential dishes from different countries, religions and cultures that are apparently in conflict with each other but “come together through their shared gastronomy,” said Sarhad’s owner-chef Aman Jaspal (whose first name means “peace”).
He plans to travel to Lahore to obtain fresh spices and ingredients for the dish that he and his wife Sameena are planning to serve at the food festival — Chicken Biryani, the rice and chicken dish popular in both India and Pakistan.
Sameena Jaspal, who is from New Zealand and whose parents run a chain of restaurants there, is excited about the event. “It’s a great feeling to know that like Sarhad there are like minded organisations in the world who consider food as peace facilitator,” she told IANS in Amritsar.
The theme of the food event this year, keeping in view the terror strikes in Paris, Brussels and other places across the world, celebrates reconciliation, life and peace around and through food.
The unique border restaurant ‘Sarhad’ showcases the architectural, cultural and culinary heritage of pre-partition Punjab in general and Amritsar and Lahore cities in particular.
The popular Lahori menu at the restaurant includes Chapli Kebab, Nihari Ghost, Bannu Kebab, Fish Korma, Miyanji ki Dal and Bakarkhani Roti.
Sarhad is one of the 10 restaurants invited from across the world with a similar mission to use food as a medium for peace and reconciliation.
Sarhad has introduced non-alcoholic beer manufactured by the 160-year-old Murree Brewery in Rawalpindi, Pakistan — “to add a little fizz to the current tepid phase in Indo-Pakistan relations,” as Jaspal told IANS.
“Also available only at Sarhad is all-time Lahori favorite dessert, Khalifa Nan Khatai,” he added, noting that Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif presented seven boxes of this dessert to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Modi’s swearing in ceremony in 2014.
The brick-lined ‘Sarhad’ restaurant complex, launched on August 15, 2012, boasts furniture designed by Lahore’s Ansa Zafar has and Salahauddin Michu’s ceramic jaali panels with exquisite motifs inspired by the Lahore fort and Indus valley civilization.
The restaurant also owns vehicles painted by Pakistan’s celebrated truck artist, Haider Ali, with the slogan “India-Pakistan Friendship Zindabad”. Iconic Pakistani architect and designer Nayar Ali Dada was roped in to incorporate features of old Lahore and old Amritsar in Sarhad’s design.
“If Paris can try to discover peace and reconciliation through food, there is no reason why India and Pakistan, which share a great common culinary heritage, should not give a chance to food diplomacy. Sarhad would be more than willing to host such an effort,” said Aman Jaspal, who studied Economics in Norway before venturing into the food business.
He hopes that one day India and Pakistan will foster better ties through the gourmet route — hopes supported by millions in the region and abroad.
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