EPICURIOUS THE BENGALI TRIANGLE.

The year was 1972, a year after the secession of East Pakistan, when Ustad Allah Ditta, a Bengali by origin, set up his kerbside samosa stall in Farooqia Market located in Islamabad's Sector F-6/1.

It wasn't long before the freshly prepared piping-hot crunchy, golden snacks with a meaty centre became the talk of the whole town. Now, a visit to the Asli Bengali Samosa Centre is on everybody's bucket list, including those who visit Islamabad.

The Asli Bengali Samosa Centre (ABSC) is easily recognised by a picture of an elderly, bearded Ustad Allah Ditta and is not to be confused with other similar-sounding rip-offs - a lot of Ustad Allah Ditta's undeserving and unworthy former shagirds [students] and ex-workers, aiming to cash in on ABSC's popularity, have set up samosa stalls too. But the taste is never the same.

As I recall, my earliest visit to ABSC was when a dear friend and a die-hard foodie, who had shifted to Islamabad from Karachi in the early 2000s, took me there on a typically heavily overcast and rainy Islamabad day. We were on our way to the famous China Furniture Market (that's a story for another day), but he wanted to satisfy his craving for the ever-popular Karachi samosa.

The Asli Bengali Samosa Centre in Islamabad continues to provide a taste of genuine Karachi to tea-time snack aficionados

As a Karachiite, I, too, found the samosas to be just as good, if not better than those in Karachi. It's one of the many foodie treats commonly associated with Karachi's Urdu-speaking diaspora - others being nihari, paaye, haleem and biryani, now also available in Islamabad, which was thought to be severely...