Iran into Hooria Sayeed earlier this month at the Karachi Expo Centre, where she and other student chefs from the College of Tourism and Hotel Management (COTHM) had prepared a variety of Saudi Arabian dishes during the Pakistan Travel Mart 2026 exhibition, an annual travel and hospitality showcase.

Hooria’s spread featured a shawarma platter as the appetiser, chicken kabsa — a rice dish — as the main course and a non-alcoholic champagne as the accompanying beverage. What drew me to it was the orderly, methodical layout — her spread displayed separately from the other students’ set-ups, each dish accompanied by a handwritten recipe card in colourful markers.

“It was a group activity, in which we were assigned to prepare an appetiser, a main course item and a beverage,” Hooria tells Eos. “As I’m new at COTHM and don’t know my coursemates well, I opted to go solo.”

Hooria may be new at COTHM but she is not new to cooking. She loves to cook and has been doing it since she was 12 years old. It began with a sweet tooth — and the desserts she made because of it. “Everyone at home liked them, which encouraged me to go further,” she recalls.

A young trainee chef prepares an Arab........

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