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.”
Mad for momos: Pakistan’s first dumplings-only café carves a niche
https://arab.news/nj8cw
Mad for momos: Pakistan’s first dumplings-only café carves a niche
- 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”
Billboard Arabia Music Awards celebrates regional music scene
RIYADH: The Billboard Arabia Music Awards took place in Riyadh on Wednesday night to honor the most-streamed songs and popular artists in the region, including Palestinian Chilean singer Elyanna who is on a world tour with British rock band Coldplay.
Focusing on digital data from global music and video platforms while spotlighting Arabic music, the event attracted numerous celebrities and music enthusiasts, including Jara, billed as Saudi Arabia's first female rapper.
"Hala Walla! My name is Jara, and I’m thrilled to be at the inaugural Billboard Music Awards in Saudi Arabia. This moment is incredibly special to me, especially as I’m one of the nominees for Best Female Hip Hop Artist in the Middle East. Whether we win or not, I’m just so excited to be part of this celebration today." Jara told Arab News ahead of the ceremony.
The awards saw notable winners, including the Song of the Year award that went to “Tamer Ashour;” the Artist of the Year prize won by Sherine Abdulwahab; the Favorite Artist that was won by Amr Diab; the Best Khaliji Song prize that went to “Ayedh;” the Best Khaliji Artist award that went to Abdulmajeed Abdullah; the Best Khaliji Female Artist award won by Omaima Talib; the Best Egyptian Song nod that went to “Tamer Ashour;” the Best Levantine Song that was won by "Wain;" and the Best Female Artist from the Levant that went to Nancy Ajram. Meanwhile the Best Moroccan Song award went to Saad Al-Mujarrad’s "Guli Mata," and the Best Indie Artist nod that went to Cairokee.
Red Sea International Film Festival’s awards ceremony draws global cinema icons
- The Golden Yusr Best Feature Film Award went to “Red Path” and the Best Director prize went to Lotfi Achour for “Red Path”
- The Best Actor and Best Actress awards went to Mahmoud Bakri and Mariam Sherif, respectively
JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Film Festival held its closing red carpet event and Yusr Awards ceremony on Thursday night.
Stars from Hollywood, Bollywood and beyond walked the red carpet at the festival’s new headquarters in Al-Balad in Jeddah.
The likes of British actor and filmmaker Dev Patel, British actor John Boyega and Brazilian model Alessandra Ambrosio were on the closing event’s red carpet, although the festival will continue its slate of screenings until Dec. 14.
Hollywood’s Sarah Jessica Parker also walked the red carpet as Bollywood-to-Hollywood crossover star Priyanka Chopra Jonas and her husband, musician Nick Jonas, posed for photographs alongside Mexican actress Eiza González.
Academy Award-winning filmmaker Spike Lee — known for films such as “Malcolm X” and “BlacKkKlansman” — presided over the features competition jury this year, which awarded the coveted Yusr Awards late on Thursday night. Meanwhile, Oscar-winning actress and producer Viola Davis and Chopra-Jonas were honored at the closing event.
Lee spoke to Arab News hours before the awards ceremony, saying the festival’s international slate of films impressed him.
“It’s just great. The films (that) were curated for us (were) from a lot of the countries in the region. I like to show my students at (New York University) world cinema, because everything’s not Hollywood. And that is how you learn about a culture, the stories that they tell reflect the history and the herstory — you’ve got to say both now — of the world we live in.”
Lee kept tight lipped about the winners, saying: “The 16 films that were in competition, we had a lot of choices. So, we deliberated amongst my fellow jurors, it was hard to pick.”
Of the 14 awards up for grabs at the Yusr Awards ceremony, the Golden Yusr Best Feature Film Award went to “Red Path,” the Best Director prize went to Lotfi Achour for “Red Path” and the Jury Award was given to “Seeking Haven For Mr. Rambo” by director Khaled Mansour.
The Best Actor and Best Actress awards went to Mahmoud Bakri and Mariam Sherif, respectively. Meanwhile the Golden Yusr Short Film prize went to “Hatch” by directors Alireza Kazemipour and Panta Mosleh and the Film AlUla Best Saudi Film Award went to “Hobal” by director Abdulaziz Alshlahei.
The festival, which is running under the theme “The New Home of Film” this year, featured 120 films from 81 countries at the new venue — previous ones were held at the city’s Ritz-Carlton hotel — where five purpose-built cinemas and a large auditorium hosted back-to-back screenings as well as “In Conversation” panels with celebrities.
Dev Patel (L), John Boyega (R) and guest in the Green Room on Closing Night on of the Red Sea International Film Festival 2024 on December 12, 2024 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Getty Images)
Those talks proved to be the biggest draw of the festival, with leading Hollywood and Bollywood stars featured on the agenda. From Indian superstars Kareena Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor to Marvel actor Jeremy Renner and Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser, as well as Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas, among others, this year’s bill was not short on star power.
Johnny Depp’s film “Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness” is the closing ceremony screening on Thursday night and Depp is expected to walk a separate red carpet before the screening.
Priyanka Chopra Jonas eyeing Bollywood return in 2025, crossover star says at RSIFF
- Misses dancing and culture, she says at Red Sea film festival
- Feels ‘fortunate’ to work in 2 of world’s largest film industries
JEDDAH: Bollywood fans can rest easy — Indian superstar and film producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas is not yet done with India’s film industry and is planning to return as soon as 2025.
“I’ve been seeking to do something again. It’s been almost six, seven years since I’ve done a movie back in India. I’m hoping next year … I’m very close,” Chopra Jonas told Arab News.
She was speaking on the sidelines of the fourth edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah, where she was honored at the closing ceremony on Thursday.
“I like a couple of things very much. I’m really hoping next year I do an Indian movie, because I miss the dancing,” she said.
“I miss the language, I miss Indian culture. I miss working with the crew that I’ve grown up working with in the Indian film industry,” continued Chopra Jonas, who is married to American musician Nick Jonas.
“So I really never transitioned from Bollywood to Hollywood. The idea was always to balance both. I think I’m very fortunate to be one of the very few talents that can work in two of the largest film industries in the world. And I am very proud of that.”
Chopra Jonas is coming off a packed 2024 schedule where she completed filming on two massive projects, including Amazon Prime Video’s “Citadel” season two and the Hollywood swashbuckler action film “The Bluff,” co-starring Karl Urban.
The series “Citadel,” produced by “Avenger: Endgame” filmmakers Joe and Anthony Russo, and also starring “Game of Thrones” actor Richard Madden, introduced two new international spin-off series this year, with two more in the works.
While “Citadel: Diana” is set in Italy, “Citadel: Hunny Bunny,” starring Samantha Ruth Prabhu and Varun Dhawan, follows the lives of Chopra Jonas’ character Nadia Sinh’s parents.
“I think it’s the only show of its kind in the world to try to achieve that, which is having other original shows from local languages that are all connected. I don’t think that’s ever been achieved in entertainment.
“And it’s a really ambitious idea, and only, I guess, Amazon Prime Video could pull it off. I’ve worked with them a lot this year, and as a studio they just have really ambitious ideas, and I’ve had a great time working this year with them,” said Chopra Jonas.
She added: “The second season was really fun to film because we’ve now connected stories from our international shows as well. In the second season, we have a lot of new cast that’s come in.
“Joe Russo directed most of it himself, which was really cool, because he’s just incredibly talented when it comes to shooting something at that scale, but yet not losing the integrity of your characters. So that was really wonderful.
“I think this season is very grounded. It’s very about the characters and what is happening with each one of our stories, which I think people will find really, really interesting.”
Chopra Jonas also stars in the upcoming pirate flick “The Bluff,” from British indie filmmaker Frank E. Flowers. Apart from Chopra Jonas and Urban, the film also stars “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” actor Ismael Cruz Cordova.
“I mean, to play a female pirate is an incredible opportunity, and especially because female pirates actually existed. So, it was really wonderful for me to start doing research into the 1800s and 1700s and, you know, read about amazing, legendary female pirates like Grace O’Malley.
“And it was just really amazing to think that in the 1700s you have like women that were captains of pirate ships and did what we usually see men do,” she said.
“And then when I read the script, it’s a really grounded movie. So, it’s not like ‘Pirates of the Caribbean,’ where, you know, it’s like fun, but it’s like the serious version of what piracy actually was like, and pillaging.
“And so it’s a wonderful story about a woman trying to save her family from her past. I love that story. We shot it in Australia over three months. The story is based in the Cayman Islands, so we recreated that. And, yeah, I finished shooting that in August, and then I went into ‘Citadel’ season two.”
Chopra Jonas shot to fame in Bollywood in the early noughties and starred in several blockbusters including “Don 2” and the “Krrish” franchise before catching the eye of Hollywood casting directors, most notably with 2017’s “Baywatch” and 2021’s “The Matrix Resurrections.”
Still to screen: Movies you can catch this weekend at RSIFF
- With just two days to go, here are a handful of the films coming up at the festival
‘Holes’
Director: Abdulmohsen Aldhabaan
Starring: Mariam Abdulrahman, Meshal Almutairi
Saudi writer-director Aldhabaan’s latest feature has echoes of his last, “The Matchmaker,” in that “Holes” is also a psychological thriller. It centers on Rakan and his wife Rim, desperate to find their own place so that they no longer have to live with Rakan’s mother. The only issue with their new home is the hole that someone appears to have hammered through one of its walls. After moving in, Rakan becomes increasingly distant from his wife. Through flashbacks, we begin to learn why his mood has changed, and when his mother is attacked by burglars breaking into her house, Rakan is confronted by an unwelcome reminder of his past.
‘Better Man’
Director: Michael Gracey
Starring: Robbie Williams, Steve Pemberton, Alison Steadman
It’s the story of UK pop superstar Robbie Williams, but “Better Man” is not your average musical biopic. While the rest of the cast consists of actors (including some of England’s finest), Williams is played by a CGI chimpanzee (voiced by the man himself), because of Williams’ feeling of being a “performing monkey” for most of his career. The result is actually genuinely moving as we follow Williams’ meteoric rise as a member of boy band Take That through his record-breaking solo career to his struggles with fame, addiction and depression — arguably far more moving because of the choice to not have Williams, or, indeed, any other actor, play the lead. An astonishing technical achievement.
‘Lail Nahar’
Director: Abdulaziz Almuzaini
Starring: Abdullah Al-Sadhan, Zyad Alamri, Nawaf Alsulaiman
Saudi writer-director Almuzaini is best known as the co-creator of the wildly popular animated series “Masameer.” With “Lail Nahar” he turns his satirical lens on the Saudi entertainment industry. Popular singer Nahar is accused of racism in a video that goes viral. To counter the accusations, he announces — live — his upcoming marriage to a black woman. There’s just one snag: he doesn’t yet have a fiancée. However, he comes to an arrangement with a wedding singer, and the pair find that their fake romance unexpectedly blossoms into an emotional journey.
‘My Driver and I’
Director: Ahd Kamel
Starring: Roula Dakheelallah, Mishaal Tamer, Mustafa Shehata
Saudi actress, writer, director and producer Kamel mines her own childhood in this coming-of-age story set in Jeddah in the Eighties and Nineties. It centers on the relationship between a rebellious girl, Salma, and her family’s chauffeur, a Sudanese man named Gamar, who quickly becomes her confidant and something of a father figure in lieu of her real dad, an always-on-the-go businessman. But as Salma grows up, their relationship becomes strained as Gamar tries to rein in her defiance, believing that he is protecting her reputation.
‘Night of the Zoopocalypse’
Directors: Ricardo Curtis, Rodrigo Perez-Castro
Voice cast: Gabbi Kosmidis, David Harbour, Scott Thompson
Animated comedy-horror inspired by a short story by English horror writer Clive Barker. A meteorite crashes into Colepepper Zoo, releasing a virus that turns the majority of the animals there into zombies. The handful of survivors, led by a young wolf named Gracie and the gruff old mountain lion Dan, team up to find a cure and defeat the mutant Bunny King. Family-friendly fun.
‘Yalla Parkour’
Director: Areeb Zuaiter
Starring: Areeb Zuaiter, Ahmad Matar
Palestine-born filmmaker Zuaiter’s debut feature documentary picked up the International Prize at DOC NYC. It was reportedly 10 years in the making and was completed before the events of Oct. 7, 2023 (although the ongoing destruction of Gaza is noted in the prologue). The film was inspired by internet footage the Washington-based Zuaiter discovered in 2013 of a group of young men performing parkour in Khan Yunis, in south Gaza. At the time, Zuaiter was searching for connection to her homeland, having lost her Palestinian mother. Via social media, she gets in touch with one of the athletes, Ahmad Matar, and they begin to talk about life in Gaza — where Zuaiter is unable to visit. But with Matar as her guide, she begins to rediscover childhood memories, and to see parkour as a form of hope and freedom in the face of oppression.
‘A Sudden Case of Christmas’
Director: Peter Chelsom
Starring: Danny DeVito, Andie MacDowell, Wilmer Valderrama
This seasonal film is a family affair on several levels, not least because comedy legend Danny DeVito stars alongside his daughter Lucy. It’s the story of an American couple on the verge of separating. To break the news to their 10-year-old daughter Claire, they take a trip to her grandfather’s hotel in Italy. Hoping that she can hatch a plan to keep her parents together, Claire asks the whole family to celebrate a final Christmas together. In August.
REVIEW: Keira Knightley fronts wonderfully over-the-top spy drama ‘Black Doves’
- Knightley and Ben Whishaw dazzle in new Netflix show
LONDON: It’s not uncommon to see Keira Knightley on TV around the festive period — usually in reruns of “Love Actually” or the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. But “Black Doves” – a new six-part Netflix series from writer/creator Joe Barton – sees Knightley in an altogether different Christmas setting.
On the streets of festive London, Knightley’s Helen is swept up in a world of snipers and espionage after the death of a civil servant forces her everyday life as a devoted wife and mother to overlap with her secret career as a Black Dove — a spy who has been passing secrets from her politician husband to a shadowy organization run by spymaster Reed (Sarah Lancashire, devouring every single scene she’s in). With Helen now a target, her friend and master assassin Sam (Ben Whishaw) sweeps in to help her get to the bottom of the threat.
What follows is a fast-paced caper that’s equal parts whodunnit, violent gangster flick and British character drama. Knightley’s Helen is all polished calm with simmering rage, Whishaw’s Sam is an amiable, charming man with a terrifying aptitude for violence. Together, the two form one of the most dynamic on-screen partnerships of recent years. Each part of their history — some hinted at, some told via flashbacks — feels captivatingly real and relatable, despite the fact that both have more spy skills than Bond and Bourne combined.
At times, it’s super-tropey — characters write important names and events on notepads, or whispered flashbacks are used to remind us that what’s happening is Very Important Because of That Thing That Guy Said Last Episode. But where such heavy-handedness is usually an irritation, “Black Doves” leans into its pulpy tendencies, and is actually all the better for it. Because it’s that combination of highly implausible spy thriller and decidedly British sensibilities that makes this show fizz. It’s great to see Helen battle a knife-wielding assassin in her kitchen, or to see Sam decimate attackers in his pajamas (it remains, though, very disconcerting to hear the voice of Paddington Bear discussing a shootout), but it’s also great to hear them bicker about their personal lives in between set pieces.
“Black Doves” is a wonderful, festive surprise — a show that’s as good as the sum of its impressive parts, and then some.
