American espressos in Abbottabad

This sleepy university town is getting mean about the bean.

There is much to be said for that sweet, hot 100-rupee milky coffee in a Styrofoam cup during a chilly walk up north. The Nescafé may be just powdery granule, but the romance of this hot drink more than makes up for what it lacks in taste. For decades vacationing Pakistanis were more than happy with this limited option. But now it seems, they are getting serious about their bean. Welcome to the American espressos of Abbottabad.

The hill station, made recently infamous for hosting a rather unwanted guest, is a popular tourist spot. The pine-filled valley is also renowned for its top-notch universities and military brass. It is generally cold 10 months of the year and thus tends to be a slightly sleepy student town. But the arrival of a handful of coffee shops is slowly changing its culture.

As with most pioneers in a frontier town, need is the mother of invention. Software developer Sohaib and his wife Sadia moved to Abbottabad from Lahore as doctors advised the climate would be better for their son, eight-year-old Harris. “Moving to another city from a Lahore is always a challenging experience, especially if you are a foodie and used to what Lahore has to offer,” says Sohaib. “I spent my last two days in Lahore filling up on [my last of its] food and coffee.”

As they had dreaded, Sohaib and Sadia found upon their arrival that Abbottabad only had instant mix to offer. For espresso-drinker Sohaib, this created a near state of emergency. Sadia said that if they wanted good coffee they’d have to do something about it themselves.

Thus, Coffity (coffee and tea), billed at Abbottabad’s first dedicated coffee shop, opened in February 2010. As luck would have it, the cappuccino-starved couple stumbled upon the well-located new Jadoon Plaza in Phase 2 which even had proper parking. “We immediately rented two [shops] and had to settle for the first floor as the ground floor was all gone by then,” says Sadia.

They started with a low-cost interior design because they weren’t entirely sure the business would even take off. The couple had been practicing on small home-use espresso machines and a Black & Decker worth Rs30,000. They hooked up to a supply of Arabica and Robusta, added free wifi as an attraction and were good to go.

The initial offerings were mainly home-baked cakes, some blended drinks and coffee, using semi-automatic machines as it was hard to get a barista. “It was a very tough job for me,” says Sadia, who had to do all the baking, manage the shop and look after her son.

But they found that espresso was popular. “Espresso drinkers discover[ed] us and [were] pleasantly surprised to find real coffee in Abbottabad,” says Sohaib. Army officers tend to like black coffee and espresso is thus their biggest seller.



As Abbottabad is a tiny market, Coffity didn’t experience exponential growth, but business was steady enough to stay open with almost 50 to 60 customers a day. Three years on they have doubled their size, completely redone the interior, upgraded to a proper Italian coffee machine and a small baking team.

They now offer a range of desserts from Death by Chocolate to cinnamon rolls and even New York cheesecake. Their savoury line is constantly experimenting with pizza, calzones and paninis, but it is their coffee that has developed the cult following of students.

It was then only a matter of time for one of the global chains to reach Abbottabad. Gloria Jean’s Coffees, which first opened in Lahore in 2007, reached Abbottabad in July 2012. “I never thought it would be such a great opening for us,” remarks Hamza Tarakai, a 20-something who now runs the team for the company that bought the franchise rights, Food Express. “It actually surpassed our expectations and got people out of their homes.” Their baristas are trained to produce espressos and even Ristressos. “Juggling cups and beans and extracting that perfect shot is all part of the challenge,” says Tarakai.



But if you want a slightly mom-and-pop experience, you’ll have to take a 45-minute drive north-east of Abbottabad to reach the Pipeline Coffee Shop in Doonga Gali. Anis, a practicing dentist, and his wife Abida, named it after a walking track it is located off.

“It was my husband’s idea to convert our garage into a coffee shop,” says Abida. They opened the 15-seat spot in June 2012 with the help of an architect friend. “We thought that if it won’t run well we’d convert it back into a garage!”

Abida uses a basic oven and appliances and makes the coffee and bakes the cakes. They buy bags of Green Bean Coffee from Islamabad, after they are imported from South Africa. But it has done so well that this year the couple redecorated with a yellow theme. They even acquired a better range of equipment, including a heavy duty Ottima Espresso Coffee machine.

“I wish I had started it some 30 years back, when I was younger and newly married,” says Abida. “But it’s never too late to start something new.”

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, the quote ‘Army officers tend to like black coffee and espresso is thus their biggest seller’ was erroneously attributed to Shoaib. The error is regretted.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, June 16^th, 2013.

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