In Pakistan’s northwest, barbecue is rich, fat, and rooted in tradition

PESHAWAR: Leaving the historic city of Peshawar, the gateway to Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the landscape shifts dramatically as you approach the legendary Khyber Pass. Rugged hills give way to scenes of vibrant life: grills ablaze, smoke rising, and chefs shouting over the crackle of hot coals.

Welcome to Khyber, where centuries-old culinary traditions are alive and thriving in the open air, and one dish takes centre stage: Pattay Tikkay.

This is no ordinary street barbecue. Pattay Tikkay is both, primitive and simple. At its heart are chunks of fresh liver, half-cooked over glowing coals before being carefully wrapped in parda — a thin sheet of caul fat. As this fat slowly melts on the grill, it bastes the meat, transforming each skewer into a rich and flavorful marvel.

Additional cubes of fat are threaded alongside the liver, ensuring each mouthful is tasty, smoky, and deeply satisfying. Seasoning is simple: just salt.

“The taste you get here, you won’t find anywhere else,” says Mujeeb Ullah, who travels from Waziristan to satisfy his craving. For him, and many others, Pattay Tikkay is a journey worth making.

“It’s a food of strength and tradition.”

The tradition runs deep. Once eaten by warriors before battle and by tribesmen preparing for harsh winters, the dish is rooted in survival — high in energy, easy to cook over fire, and intensely nourishing, unchanged over generations.

“The secret is simple,” explains Nasir Khan, a veteran cook grilling skewers outside his roadside stall. “Good meat, good fat, and the right fire. We don’t need spices to hide anything.”

Pattay Tikkay is more than food — it’s a living history. It captures the minimalism and raw honesty of Pashtun cooking, where nothing is wasted and every ingredient is treated with care.

As dusk settles over the hills and smoke curls into the twilight sky, the fires continue to burn. Tourists, truckers, and locals gather shoulder to shoulder around the grills, united by the scent of sizzling fat and the pull of tradition.

In Khyber, cuisine is not simply eaten — it is inherited, honored, and passed down from one fire to the next. And at the heart of it all, wrapped only in fat and flame, lie the Pattay Tikkay.