Three men walk into a former strip club and turn it into a buoyant Pakistani restaurant serving cooked-to-order karahi, roghni naan, and other lesser-seen dishes from home.
I really should have eaten at Riwayat a long time ago.
The restaurant has been on my Google Map of Perth-places-to-eat-at for almost two years. It’s around the corner from the gym. And whenever I chat to Pakistani rideshare and taxi drivers about where they eat when they’re homesick, Riwayat’s name almost always comes up.
But more important than any of this: the main reason I really should have eaten at Riwayat a long time ago is because it’s home to some outstanding, uncompromising Pakistani cooking.
In Urdu, “riwayat” means history; an origin story. Riwayat’s riwayat started in late 2020, when Mubeen Shahzad, Hassan Shahzad (no relation) and Aamir Sohail opened a modest, 35-seat Pakistani restaurant in Huntingdale.
The restaurant soon outgrew its original address and the three pals from Pakistan’s Chakwal region began scouting for a new home. This search ended in December 2021 after the trio chanced on a cavernous abandoned eatery on the outskirts of the Belmont Business Park.
I don’t think it’s unkind to say that Riwayat won’t be winning awards for its design any time soon. The wooden flooring is battle-scarred, the furnishings are functional and all those hard surfaces amplify the roar of the dining room something wicked. A small al fresco is beautified with fake grass and white-painted pots and planters: an unusual decor choice, perhaps, for a Pakistani restaurant.
Equally surprising: Riwayat isn’t the first hospitality business that’s traded out of this unexpected location. In the late ’60s, this site housed Nanking, one of Perth’s few places serving Chinese food at the time. Nanking then gave way to Studio 7: a strip club that offered, I hear, a decent male revue show.
Nowadays, the only meat is chicken and baby goat (although the latter is listed on the menu, South Asian-style, as “mutton”). As Pakistan is an Islamic nation, Riwayat is a pork-free establishment, but guests can BYO. (“Would you like a wine glass or a whisky glass?” asked the waiter when I mentioned that I’d brought my own drinks. Single malts and Pakistani food: the next big thing?)
Beef, interestingly, is also absent. While beef might be halal, it’s not eaten by Hindus and Sikhs: two other religious groups practising in the subcontinent’s north. In the name of inclusivity, Riwayat’s owners – who are also its cooks – chose not to put beef on the menu so that more people could dine there. In light of the region’s history of religious conflict and the recent stand-off between Pakistan and India, this gesture feels especially thoughtful.
Similar consideration is also applied to the preparation of said meats, not least when it comes to the signature karahi. Named after the stainless-steel hubcap of a pan that it’s cooked in, karahi is a primal, unairbrushed curry marrying the lush viscosity of cooked dairy (yoghurt, dairy) to the bite of ginger and black pepper.
Crucially, every karahi – full– or half-serve, chicken or bone-in goat – is cooked to order until the contents of the pan have surrendered into a murky, oily and deeply satisfying mass. This style of a la minute cookery, naturally, can’t be rushed. Our mutton karahi took almost 40 minutes to be ready after we ordered it. Curry in a hurry this ain’t.
Riwayat regulars, however, know the thing to do is to pre-order karahi for a particular time. Now you know too. I also know that the glorious roghni naan – a puffy, crisp-bottomed flatbread studded with white sesame seeds, glazed with butter and urgent with smoke from the tandoor – is a carby pleasure that transcends the usual one-per-person guidelines. Next time, I’ll go hard on them straight out of the gate.
The tandoor also works its smoky alchemy on grilled meats including the Reshmi chicken seekh kebab: plush, ribbed fingers of mildly spiced mince that are juicy and charry in all the right places. Made with freshly baked wholewheat parathas, the lunchtime-only chicken tikka roll and Riwayat “burrito” condenses the best of both these tandoor worlds into convenient, on-the-go formats.
Considering Pakistan’s proximity to (northern) India, it’s no surprise that both countries have dishes in common. (Fun fact: Pakistan is an acronym made up of the regions that came together in 1947 to form this new nation. The P stands for Punjab.)
If you’re not au fait with Pakistani cooking, you may be across the joy of hefty vegetable samosas that you might like to try chaat-style (that is, doused in raita, cucumber and chutney). Melty butter chicken is low in tomato and food colouring but high in sweetness from its dairy namesake.
Cooked using split desi chickpeas – they’re smaller than the plumper kabuli chickpeas – channa daal’s innocuous appearance makes the vegetal sting of its green chilli stowaways all the more surprising. For anyone that’s been let down by one gluggy, leaden biryani rice too many, Riwayat’s fluffy, high-definition rendition will restore your faith in the genre.
Like every restaurant, Riwayat has areas it could work on – a little more engagement from some staff would go a long way; the onion salad, a side plate of sliced red onions plus a wedge of lemon, is only a salad because it believes it is – but the highs outnumber the lows. For anyone curious about a strain of cooking that’s on the rise out west, Riyawat would be a fine first chapter.
The low-down
Vibe: a spirited Pakistani restaurant where the cooking is as lovely as the dining room.
Go-to dish: mutton karahi and roghni naan.
Drinks: Pakistani lassi and teas. BYO is also available.
Cost: about $95 for two people.
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Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
