How Inflation is Reshaping Pakistan's Food Habits
The most underrated cooking school in Pakistan turned out to be an empty wallet.
From Friday tables to Friday kitchens
The family dinner that cost around Rs 1,800 in 2021 now starts nearer Rs 4,500 at any mid-tier place, pizza deals sit at Rs 3,500–4,500, and a fast-food burger has crossed Rs 1,000. So the Friday ritual moved home — and it moved with attitude. YouTube channels like Food Fusion, Cooking with Faiza and Yummy Pakistan now teach degi biryani and anda paratha to a generation that used to order in. What began as necessity has become, honestly, a better evening: the kids learning to fold samosas beats a queue in a food court.
"We make our own shawarma night now," a teacher friend in Lahore told me. "It costs half, and my kids rate my garlic sauce out of ten. I have never been prouder."
What the restaurants are doing about it
The industry did not sit still. Weekday thali deals around Rs 599, iftar kits assembled for the home table, cloud kitchens replacing expensive dining rooms, smaller menus doing fewer things properly. The survivors of this stretch understood the change clearly: people still want restaurant flavour; they just cannot pay restaurant prices for it every week.
Trading down, quietly
Imported cheese gave way to Olper's and Nurpur; the imported chocolate aisle lost ground to Candyland; and nobody's breakfast suffered for it. Shopping behaviour changed too — comparing prices before checkout, bulk staples over premium packaging, and a new pride in finding the good local option. Saving has quietly become a status symbol; the meal-prep container is the new flex.
The habits worth keeping
Leftover rice turning into morning fried rice. A pot of daal shared over the wall with a neighbour. Sunday halwa puri made at home with everyone on the counter. Seasonal buying, herbs on the windowsill, and the rediscovery that our grandmothers' preservation tricks — drying methi, pickling lemons, setting yoghurt — were always the budget's best friend. Inflation shrank the grocery cart; it accidentally expanded the kitchen.
Our inflation is cruel but careless. Gaza's is engineered — flour priced past reach by blockade, bread baked over open flame when the ovens are gone. When my own daal thins, I remember theirs, and I pray their table heals first.
The one indulgence worth protecting from a shrinking budget is the family trip. We are HTG Travels, a Sialkot desk that knows which Swat and Kalam guesthouses drop their rates when the crowds leave, and which Naran stays stay honest in high season — an off-season northern trip can cost less than a weekend of delivery apps. That math is our favourite kind; ask us.
