Seventy-five priced items and a great many puns — here is how the Karachi menu is organised, and what the jokes are actually hiding.
The Karachi menu at Meat The Cheese runs to seventy-five priced items across twelve sections. Some are named plainly; most are not. If you are staring at a page containing both "PRIME BEEF" and "BIRDS OF A FEATHER", here is the decoder.
Prices exclude service charges and GST. The Lahore branch runs its own menu.
The beef sections are dead straight: Prime Beef, Premium Steak Selection. No joke, no flourish. Everything else is wordplay — Fries With A Prize, Birds Of A Feather, Sweet Tooth Takers, and a pasta section that admits what it is doing in its own title: Pizzas, Pastas & Puns.
That is a restaurant taking the meat seriously and itself less so. The plain names are where the kitchen makes a claim; the puns are where it enjoys itself.
Prime Beef is six plated dishes, each with its sides written into the description. The Finest Cut is a Chateaubriand, in melted butter with cherry tomatoes, rocket and Parmesan shavings. Truly Lit Brisket is wood-smoked, with potato wedges. Give Me A Steak is tenderloin with cheesy linguine. The Shiitake Steak is tenderloin slices in a mushroom sauce on creamy spinach. Arugula Steak comes with mashed potatoes and vegetable gratin. Tender Loving Loin is the menu's stated best-seller: tenderloin with mashed potato and sautéed vegetables.
Premium Steak Selection is two lines with no description at all — Angus T-Bone (350–400 gms) and Angus Ribeye (340–380 gms) the two most expensive items on the menu, with The Finest Cut third.
Starters. Fingers Crossed is chicken fingers stuffed with cheese, with a hot paprika sauce. Old Fella Mozzarella is deep-fried mozzarella in a spicy marinara. Chilli Poppers are cheese-stuffed deep-fried chilli peppers. Cheesy Chick On A Stick is chicken skewers on fries, with Raclette on top.
Sandwiches & Wraps. The Chin Up Club is a club sandwich with chicken strips, an omelette and beef bacon. The Breadwinner's Beef is roasted beef with bocconcini in ciabatta. Steak It All In is a steak sandwich with cheese and fries.
Birds Of A Feather is the chicken section, eight dishes deep and the largest on the menu. Lost In The Sauce is crispy-fried chicken in a spicy tomato and basil sauce with linguine. Thunder Thigh is a buttermilk-marinated chicken thigh in a cheese sauce. Bacon Me Crazy is chicken stuffed with turkey bacon.
Pizzas, Pastas & Puns. Mactastic is mac and cheese with four cheeses, chicken and pepperoni. All That Glitters is gold-crusted fried chicken with fettuccine. The Golden Layers is a chicken lasagne. Cheeto Chili Alfredo is penne in a Thai chilli Parmesan cream.
The Burger Crowd. The Patty Animal is an Angus patty topped with a deep-fried mozzarella and cheddar patty. Chipotle Bee-Eff-Eff-In is an Angus patty in chipotle sauce, and Double Cluck is two buttermilk fillets stacked.
Several items carry no description at all: both premium steaks, both wood-fired pizzas (Pepperoni Creamy Italian Crust ), the soups (Cream of Chicken Cream of Mushroom ), and all four desserts — Lotus Cheese Cake Dark Chocolate Tart Caramel Croissant Pudding and Good Old Fudge. Ask, rather than guess.
If you came for steak. Pick a cut from the Premium Steak Selection, or take the Tender Loving Loin which the menu calls the best-seller and which arrives with its sides sorted.
If you did not. The Burger Crowd is the cheapest route to Angus beef. Fries With A Prize, three items between and is for sharing.
If the cheese in the name was the draw. It is not decorative. Cheese appears in most of the menu's descriptions, from the Raclette on the skewers to the four cheeses in the Mactastic.
The Karachi menu carries seventy-five priced items across twelve sections. The Lahore branch runs its own menu of seventy-two.
The Angus Ribeye then the Angus T-Bone and The Finest Cut all exclusive of service charges and GST.
No. Several dishes exist in one city only, the headings differ slightly, and Lahore.
Meat The Cheese has traded as a steakhouse since 2017. It was named Winner, Best Innovation Dish at the APRA Awards 2019 — run by the All Pakistan Restaurant Association and decided by public vote, an award to a dish rather than a restaurant.
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Karachi — Tipu Sultan Road, PECHS. 0311 1243373. Lahore — C-3 Noor Jahan Road, near Hussain Chowk, Gulberg III. Both open daily, 12:00 PM to 12:00 AM.