LAHORE:
The committee in charge of the Fort Road Food Street has decided to organise three competitive cooking events before the end of the year to attract more customers.
The Fort Road Food Street has not attracted a large following since it was opened in January near the historic Lahore Fort. The venue is difficult to reach, especially nowadays with the construction of the Bus Rapid Transit System.
The Fort Road Food Street committee met on Monday and the ideas for a cooking competition among students of girls’ colleges and for the Lahore Food Festival and the Winter Food Festival were granted verbal approval by District Coordination Officer Noorul Amin Mengal.
The cooking competition for girls will be based on popular television cooking shows. Teams of students will be set up and each will have control over one restaurant for a week. Popular singers will be called in each night to perform. At the end of the week, the team that runs the best restaurant will win. The committee, which is chaired by MNA Hamza Shahbaz, has not yet decided what kind of award the winners should get. The event is to take place at the beginning of November.
The Lahore Food Festival is to take place by the end of November and feature magic shows, puppet shows, comedy shows and qawwali and ghazal concerts. Stalls selling local handicrafts would be set up nearby. Each day of the festival would have a different food theme.
The week-long Winter Food Festival is to take place in mid-December. Stalls selling Kashmiri shawls, silk cloth, antiques and local handicrafts would also be set up at the festival.
Food Street Secretary Colonel Altaf told The Express Tribune that the events were meant to promote business at the food street. He said that a competition of establishments at the food street competition and a “food street gala” had also been mooted. He said that the Fort Road Food Street could become a major attraction for Pakistani and foreign tourists.
He said that students of the National College of Arts and Punjab University’s Fine Arts Department would assist organisers of the events.
He said that they would start contacting girls’ colleges in two or three days to seek participants in the cooking competition. He said that Ahmad Shafiq of the College of Tourism and Hotel Management was helping arrange the competition.
He said that the next meeting of the committee would be chaired by DCO Mengal. He said that they would meet fortnightly or weekly to decide further details about the events.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 9th, 2012.
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I suggest government should purchase old city of Lahore and then preserve old city as it was in Mughal era, a tourist spot, ‘palkies’ and ‘Tangas’, no car allowed, who ever enter in old city, enter in a time machine that takes people back to 400 years.
oo I miss food street