Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Last Salad at Pizza Hut

I went to one of the Pizza Hut restaurants a couple of nights ago after a very long time. I was amazed to see how much they have grown in terms of business and customers, as the new restaurant I went to was huge and completely jammed pack.

Another thing that I saw growing (and jam packed) were the salads. I am sure all Karachiites reading this would know what I am talking about: people walking to the salad bars came back with plates heaped so high so as to give Mount Vesuvius some competition. Some plates looked like Aztec pyramids, while others looked like an orangutan would jump out from them any moment. People stack those salads so high that the plates would probably break if someone breathed on them. I believe each of the salad plate I saw could easily feed a whole village in Botswana; for twenty days! I actually heard of a research that some scientists are conducting on such salad stacking because they believe the same principles can be used to get rid of the world's garbage problem*, if they can learn to stack it so high and compact.

Yet, the higher the stacks of salads, the lower the standard of quality maintained at the restaurant. The service has fallen, most of the waiters are not trained, and it seemed like the management was having a very hard time serving so many customers at once. People incessantly demanded forks, knives, and ketchup so that they can start eating their pizzas and it seemed like the restaurant just did not have enough forks, knives, or ketchup** for every customer. Even if they did, the movements of the waiter was continuously being hindered by the movements of several large structures, ala the salad crescendos. I sat there and ate my pizza with my hand, the way it should be eaten, not with knives, forks, and/or ketchup, and looked at the fiasco that they are now calling Pizza Hut.





* not really

**Ketchup is probably the number-one selling condiment in Pakistan. People like to eat ketchup here with their French fries, fried chicken, pakoras***, samosas****, patties, sandwiches, burgers, steaks, egg fried rice, pizzas, and pretty much everything else that does not require a chapatti to eat with. People just can’t get enough of ketchup.

*** fried onions/potatoes/eggplant/green chili pepper in a flour batter

**** pastry stuffed with beef/lentil/potatoes

1 comment:

Zaira R. Sheikh said...

Hahahaha this I noticed too since times immemorial...people take salad as if the world is about to end and this is the last salad ever left in the whole wide world.

To die for...so pile up as much as you can!