At Cafe Bogie, you can have a meal on a train without moving a mile out of Karachi

KARACHI: You may now also catch a train, not to travel anywhere, but to fulfil your gastronomical needs, as a few railroad cars or coaches at Karachi city and cantonment railway stations have been innovatively turned into restaurants, an idea that is slowly catching people’s imagination.

It looks like any other Pakistani railroad car but Cafe Bogie at City Railway Station has four compartments of which the one labelled ‘Lahore’ is the largest. There is ‘Sahiwal’ and ‘Multan’, too, and the kitchen with the pizza oven is in the fourth compartment, of course. “We have tried to preserve the original charm of a train bogie,” says Suneel Zafar, one of the partners of Cafe Bogie.

The place has been done up with LED lights and framed pictures of train engines and train stations. Outside, too, the partners who got these old railroad cars on contract from Pakistan Railways, have placed tables and chairs with umbrellas. Wifi has been provided. The staff, including waiters and cooks, all wear parrot green T-shirts that match the colour of the railroad cars. There is also one waiter dressed up as a porter or coolie in long red shirt and turban to carry takeaway food for the customers to their cars. “We could have all taken up that uniform, except that we would be worried about that turban on our heads coming undone instead of serving customers,” said Mr Zafar.

“I.I. Chundrigar Road is a busy business centre and people working in offices around here are hearing about this place only now, as we have opened just recently. It has only been five days since we opened our doors. Our timings are from noon to midnight and even till 1am on weekends. In the evenings, we get families with children, who just love to eat inside the railroad car,” he added. Mr Zafar’s partner, Fahim Jan, who is also the master chef at the place, said they had started out with pizza and sandwiches but would gradually be adding to their menu as business grew. “We hope to start barbecue soon,” he said.

Meanwhile, there was a plenty of work under way at the other railroad car restaurant at Cantonment Railway Station, which is expected to open soon. Divisional Commercial Officer of Pakistan Railways Nasir Nazeer said they had published advertisements in newspapers offering contracts to run these railroad car restaurants. “We only have one bogie at the City Station but at Cantt there are two. The contract for Cantt Station was given to Noorani Kabab House,” he said.

“It is a nice way to bring into use these old and obsolete narrow gauge train coaches just gathering rust otherwise. It is a nice way of earning revenue for Pakistan Railways as well, as the ones we have given contracts for running these restaurants will be paying us Rs200,000 a month as well. So we are right on track,” he added.

Originally published in Dawn, April 6th, 2016