The Karachi Kitchen at Barzakh Café Tarka Project's First Food Popup

Kausar Ahmed learned to cook at her mother's and grandmother's side in Karachi. Food, family, sitting around the table together. That intimacy with the kitchen never left her, and neither did the instinct to bring people in.

Over 25 years she has built a career around food that refuses to stay in one lane: chef, food stylist, television host and producer, cookbook author, culinary educator. But what defines her most has always been community. In the low-income neighborhoods of Karachi's Lyari district, she taught women about food, hygiene, and nutrition, helped them start small baking businesses, and built one of the largest home economics labs in the city. In 2009 she formalized this work through Kitchen Craft, offering free cooking and nutrition workshops to women and youth in high-risk communities across Karachi.

When she moved to Seattle, the same conviction followed. As Executive Chef and Chef Educator at Project Feast, she worked alongside immigrant and refugee communities, offering practical culinary training and real pathways to employment. The kitchen, for Kausar, has never been just about food. It's about what people carry with them, and what they're capable of.

Her cookbook, The Karachi Kitchen: Classic and Contemporary Flavors of Pakistan, is a love letter to a cuisine too often overlooked, drawing from the rich, layered food culture of a city at the crossroads of South, Central, and West Asia. Now, alongside her daughter Sadaf, she runs The Karachi Kitchen as a small-batch food business: handcrafted, preservative-free Pakistani chutneys and masalas, made by hand from heirloom family recipes. She makes every batch herself.

This popup is Tarka Project's first and a homecoming of sorts, since our co-founder is the other Ahmed daughter. Barzakh Café, rooted in diaspora culture and the belief that a table should be open to everyone, feels like exactly the right place for it. Tarka Project's Zara Dekho and Dynoman will also be curating music to go with it.

The menu is designed to feel like home for those who grew up with this food, and a real introduction for those coming to it for the first time. Along with the food you will have a chance to taste and/or purchase some of Karachi Kitchen's own Churneys!

We hope to see you there!

Tarka Presents: Flavours of Pakistan with The Karachi Kitchen

Tarka Presents: Flavours of Pakistan with The Karachi Kitchen