‘Pearson Specter Litt’ attracts customers, not litigants, by serving coffee and pasta in Lahore

The cafe's employees busy making coffee for a customer on the ground floor of Pearson Specter Litt on January 7, 2023. (AN Photo/Muhammad Islam)
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Updated 16 January 2023
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‘Pearson Specter Litt’ attracts customers, not litigants, by serving coffee and pasta in Lahore

  • The newly launched café in the city is inspired by a hit American legal television drama called ‘Suits’
  • The cafe's owner says he is trying to get the top stars of the show to visit the facility in Lahore

LAHORE: When you walk into “Pearson Specter Litt,” do not expect to see a suave Harvey Specter bluff his way out of a jam with a billionaire client. Or to see Louis Litt ogling at his name placed prominently after “Pearson” and “Specter” on a well-lit wall as he takes a sip of the disgusting “Prunie.” At this Pearson Specter Litt, you’re only served coffee and pasta. And it’s right here in Lahore.

Inspired by the American TV drama “Suits,” Lahore-based businessman Muhammad Fayaz, 35, decided to open a café in the city that takes its name after the show’s fictional law firm. Located at Fairways Commercial area in Lahore, the facility is a tribute to the hugely popular show that ran from 2011 to 2019. Fayyaz opened the restaurant for customers in December last year.

The Suits vibe is felt everywhere inside the building. There’s a bunch of pictures hanging on the right wall as soon as one enters the café. In one of the pictures, Harvey Specter (played by Gabriel Macht) is seen standing in the midst, hands deep in his pockets and face locked in an intense expression, with the other partners huddled around him.

In another, Specter is seen with coffee in one hand and bagel in the other, as he probably delivers a witty retort to his protégé, Mike Ross, out on the street outside the firm. Each floor of the two-story café is well decorated and features numerous sofas. On the ground floor is a huge glass casing that shows off assorted cakes.

But why would someone in Lahore, where the show is not immensely popular, open a café themed after it? Fayyaz said it had to do with a “painful moment” in the show when the name “Pearson Specter Litt” was removed from the firm’s wall after Specter and Litt had to shed Pearson as a partner.

It was then that he decided to open a restaurant to offer the same “luxury” that the famous lawyers in the TV drama provided their billionaire clients.

“So, I said I’m going to put this name somewhere,” he told Arab News. “But I asked myself where I would put this name up, what should I start? Then, this idea [to open a café] came to me.”

“We chose Pearson Specter Litt [to brand the café] because, to some extent, I feel they represent luxury, they represent values and standards,” Fayyaz continued.




Two large snooker tables for customers at the Pearson Specter Litt on January 7, 2023 in Lahore. (AN Photo/Muhammad Islam)

Even the items on the menu are named after the three partners of the law firm, Jessica Pearson (Gina Torres), Specter and Litt (Rick Hoffman).

In the Poultry section of the menu, the cafe offers Litt Polo, a charcoal-grilled chicken served with creamy spice sauce and the chef’s choice of potato. In the pasta section, there’s Pearson Spicy Pasta that comprises spicy grilled chicken mixed with the chef’s special spicy creamy sauce.

“The most expensive items are named after Jessica [Pearson], while items that are hot but relatively less expensive are named after Harvey [Specter],” the café owner explained.

When customers want to have an item in large quantity, the waiters recommend them to go for “Louis Litt.”




A couple of framed stills of various scenes from the 'Suits' series hang on a wall inside the cafe on January 7, 2023. (AN Photo/Muhammad Islam)

“If anyone wants to buy a big item, whether it is soup, sandwich, burger or any other thing, we recommend them to have Louis Litt,” Fayyaz smiled. “This is because his face is very huge. So, we have named all big servings after him.”

Khurram Khan, 47, who came to the café to have coffee with family, said he wasn’t aware of the café’s theme or why it was named Pearson Specter Litt.

However, he said it was “unique” while admiring how all three floors were differently decorated.

“I think I heard the name [of the café] somewhere but I don’t know the real theme and background of this name,” Khan told Arab News.

“However, I appreciate the comfort, the atmosphere, especially on the mezzanine floor.”

Another customer, who preferred to remain anonymous, said he wasn’t aware of the café’s name as well and had only walked in for a cup of coffee.

However, Fayyaz said he admired the three characters due to their powerful on-screen presence.

“Jessica Pearson has a style of leadership that is outstanding, though I, like everyone else, liked the way she dressed,” he said.

“I also loved Harvey Specter and the way he bluffed his client,” he continued. “Louis Litt is shown as a character with knowledge who also has an emotional side to him.”




A large, framed still from 'Suits' shows Harvey Specter (played by Gabriel Macht) sipping coffee from his expensive New York apartment, on January 7, 2023. (AN Photo/Muhammad Islam)

Fayyaz said he hoped to open a chain of cafés across Pakistan and was trying to get the show’s top stars visit the facility in Lahore. He informed that he had asked one of his team members to reach out to the actors through email and social media and tell them about Pearson Specter Litt in Lahore.

“We want to invite them and inform them that we are such huge fans of yours that we have spent hundreds of millions to put your names up on our wall to keep them alive in a way,” he said.

“Hopefully, we will get the response sooner or later,” he continued. “I’m not a guy who gives up easily. Sooner or later, I’ll bring them [here].”




Muhammad Fayyaz, owner of the Pearson Specter Litt cafe, gestures during an interview with Arab News at the Manhattan Bar on January 7, 2023. (AN Photo/Muhammad Islam)

 


Art and the deal: market slump pushes galleries to the Gulf

Updated 47 sec ago
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Art and the deal: market slump pushes galleries to the Gulf

DOHA: With global sales mired in a slump, art dealers have turned to buyers in the oil-rich Gulf, where culture sector spending is on the rise.
Art Basel, which runs elite fairs in Miami, Hong Kong, Paris and Switzerland, held its Gulf debut in Qatar earlier this month.
“The second you land here, you see the ambition. It’s basically the future,” Andisheh Avini, a senior director at New York-based Gagosian Gallery, told AFP at the Doha fair.
“We see a lot of potential in this region and in Qatar,” Avini said, explaining it was “extremely important” for galleries to be exploring new consumer and collector bases.
“That’s why we’re here. And with patience and a long view, I think this is going to be a great hub,” he added.
A 2025 report on the global art market by Art Basel and the Swiss bank UBS showed sales fell across traditional centers in Europe and North America in the previous year.
Economic volatility and geopolitical tensions have weighed on demand, meaning global art market sales reached an estimated $57.5 billion in 2024 — a 12 percent year-on-year decline, the report said.
“The value of sales has ratcheted down for the past two years now, and I do think we’re at a bit of a turning point in terms of confidence and activity in the market,” Art Basel’s chief executive Noah Horowitz told AFP in Doha.

’Time was right’

“Looking at developments in the global art world, we felt the time was right to enter the (Middle East, North Africa and South Asia) region,” he added.
Gulf states have poured billions into museums and cultural development to diversify their economies away from oil and gas and boost tourism.
In 2021, Abu Dhabi, home to the only foreign branch of the Louvre, announced a five-year plan for $6 billion in investments in its culture and creative industries.
Doha has established the National Museum of Qatar and the Museum of Islamic Art. The gas-rich country’s museums authority has in the past reported an annual budget of roughly $1 billion a year to spend on art.
Last year, Saudi Arabia announced that cultural investments in the Kingdom have exceeded $21.6 billion since 2016.
Gagosian had selected early works by Bulgarian artist Christo to feature at Art Basel Qatar.
Best known for large-scale works with his French partner Jeanne-Claude, like the wrapping of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe in 2021, Berlin’s Reichstag in 1995 and Pont Neuf in 1985, the Doha fair exhibited smaller wrapped sculptures.
Avini said the works had sparked curiosity from an “interesting mix” of individuals and potential buyers.
“Of course, you have the Qataris. You’re meeting other dealers, for instance, from Saudi and other parts of the region,” he said.
Among the Christo works were “Wrapped Oil Barrels,” created between 1958-61 shortly after the artist fled communist Bulgaria for Paris.

‘Turn of the cycle’

The barrels — bound tightly with rope, their fabric skins stiffened and darkened with lacquer — inevitably recall the Gulf’s vast hydrocarbon wealth.
But Vladimir Yavachev, Christo’s nephew and now director for the artists’ estate following their deaths, said the barrels were not developed with “any connotation to the oil industry or criticism.”
“He really liked the proportion of this very simple, everyday object,” Yavachev said. “It was really about the aesthetics of the piece,” he added.
Horowitz said there had been an “evolution that we’ve seen through the growth of the market in Asia and here now in the Middle East.”
“With each turn of the cycle in our industry... we’ve seen new audiences come to the table and new content,” he added.
Hazem Harb, a Palestinian artist living between the UAE and Italy, praised Art Basel Qatar for its range of “international artists, so many concepts, so many subjects.”
Among Harb’s works at the fair were piles of old keys reminiscent of those carried during the “Nakba” in 1948, when around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes.
Next to them was a pile of newer keys — 3D-printed replicas of the key to Harb’s own apartment in Gaza, destroyed in the recent war.
In the Gulf and beyond, Harb said he thought there was a “revolution” happening in Arab art “from Cairo to Beirut to Baghdad to Kuwait... there is a new era, about culture, about art.”