Why I Love Pakistan (Food Tour Islamabad)🇵🇰

A short food circuit of the F7 markaz in Islamabad — Arabian chicken mandi, then brownies — which turns in its last four minutes into the closest thing the 2021 series has to a thesis statement.

What he says, and it is the reason the whole series exists: the thing that keeps surprising him is people helping with nothing expected in return — directions given, then the person walking him to the shop. He is careful about the conclusion he draws from it: it is not that Pakistanis are individually exceptional, it is that this is built into how people are raised here. And he sets it directly against how the country is portrayed in Western media, saying that this is what YouTubers being able to travel here is actually for.

He is equally direct about what he can see out of the window. The houses in this part of the capital are better than anything he knows in the UK or US, so the inequality here is severe — which he says is true of most countries rather than special to this one. He declined to film the houses because filming where people live felt rude.

Obs: this page is based on auto-generated subtitles; amounts the transcript leaves ambiguous are marked unverified.

Key moments

• [01:31] An Arabian restaurant in the markaz, chosen because both of them had liked the food in Jordan.
• [04:05] Chicken mandi for two: slow-cooked chicken over seasoned rice, not spicy, which he singles out after weeks of chilli. 1,700 rupees, about $9 — above an average Pakistani meal and, he says, expected in a setting like this.
• [07:46] Dessert at a bakery in the same markaz: brownies layered with icing and fudge, which get the most enthusiastic reaction of the trip so far.
• [11:26] A police car that looks like a British one, added to his running list of colonial leftovers alongside driving on the left, cricket and A-levels.
• [11:56] Islamabad after one full day: clean, orderly, and he says you could take it for Europe. Around 15°C and jackets, with Hunza and real cold ahead.
• [12:27] Wealth and what he does about it. The housing here is better than anything he knows at home; he notes the inequality that implies, refuses to film people’s houses because it felt rude, and declines to treat the inequality as a Pakistani peculiarity.
• [13:28] The statement: what he keeps meeting is help with nothing wanted in return, he thinks it is cultural rather than individual, and he thinks the gap between that and the Western picture of Pakistan is what the trip is for.
• [14:58] Their new base: a large house in F7 converted into a 30-room hotel.

Extracted pages

• Islamabad
• Pakistan
• Mac