If you have ever eaten at the spice-infused Pakistani restaurant Ma’am Saab downtown, it is clear that the food is made with joy.
And starting Sept. 19, there will be even more opportunities to enjoy the restaurant when a new lunch service begins. From 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays through Saturdays, the kitchen window on Meeting Street will be open for a new concept in the grab-and-go lunch.
“I want to put our name on the map that we know how to do wraps and quick food,” said Raheel Gauba, Ma’am Saab’s owner and a native of Karachi, Pakistan. “We are known for a bit of an upscale dining experience. But for a person who is walking by and needs a quick bite for lunch, we want to give them something that they will remember.”
The lunch is reminiscent of the lively canteens that Gauba grew up frequenting in Karachi. Food will be served straight from the grill, wrapped up and placed into the hands of diners. Payment will be credit card only to keep things fast and the line moving.
What’s even more special: On the Lunch Punch’s opening Friday only, the new lunch options will cost $1 for students with valid student IDs. Money will go directly to Lowcountry Food Bank. Ma’am Saab is also partnering with College of Charleston’s off-campus meal plan (OCMP) and it will be live when the lunch menu launches.
Foods that punch on the lunch menu
The lunch menu’s options are limited but scream of the flavors of Pakistan.
On the meat side, options include butter chicken, a frontier kabab (a ground beef patty with eggplant spread and kachoomar, a salad with cucumbers, onions, tomatoes and herbs) and chicken karachi (a secret, spiced tomato sauce). All three can be made with paneer (fresh South Asian cheese) for a vegetarian option and for vegans, the menu offers a sweet potato and cholay (curried chickpea) choice. All items are available as a paratha (a flaky flatbread) wrap or as a bowl with Biryani rice.
Lunch options are priced at $15 and can be made into a meal with a drink and bag of chips for an additional $4. Drinks include mango lassi, masala lemonade and other soft drinks. The chip selection will be a rotating offering of Asian flavors starting with Lay’s Magic Masala chips.
Developing downtown’s newest lunch menu
Gauba and Chef Jason Lapp, a veteran of Charleston restaurants including Kwei Fei, Collectivo and La Tela Pizzeria, are clearly in sync. You can tell from the food and the kitchen operations that they trust and inspire one another.
They said a lot of testing went into the recipe development. Lapp has piggybacked off the existing dinner menu prep. The only items that the lunch menu has added to the daily prep list are an eggplant spread and a ginger-scallion mixture that goes into a mayonnaise.
Gauba said his mother, Hamida Gauba, visited recently from Toronto and joined Lapp in the kitchen to show him the family recipe for a Chapli kabab, a flat, generously spiced meat patty from Peshawar, Pakistan. Gauba and Lapp decided to put a modern, Ma’am Saab spin on the traditional chapli and created the Frontier kabab. Frontier has multiple meanings as it’s the northwest province in Pakistan and the place where chapli was created.
“Frontier, I love that word because we are breaking boundaries and doing cool things,” said Gauba. “A traditional kabab roll is going to have your tamarind chutney. It’s going to have your traditional green chili, cilantro chutney. Jason created this eggplant spread and that’s where the smokiness is coming from.
“He made some modifications and made this Frontier kabab his own. So, he is staying true to tradition but also is breaking all kinds of rules in the most amazing way possible. So that’s where the beauty of this roll is.”
What is striking about all of the options is the balance between flavors and textures. The depth of the butter chicken is brightened by the sweetness and crunch of pomegranate seeds. Many of the options start with a hint of sweet before ending with mild heat thanks to chili powder.
Vegans and vegetarian options are often an afterthought on lunch menus. At Ma’am Saab, the opposite is true. These dishes shine and manage to be both substantial and light. Sweet potato is tossed in chaat masala, and elements of salt, brown sugar and tamarind-date chutney shine through.
Making magic
Lunch and dinner menus at the restaurant are rooted in tradition with a spin.
“The foundation is still tradition and if you move away from that tradition, then everything else you build on top of it, collapses. What Jason nailed was the foundation and then he’s created a funhouse on top of it.”
Lapp noted that Pakistani food has been the most challenging of the cuisines he’s cooked because he didn’t have a base in it. But he bounces everything off Gauba and they are constantly developing, tasting and tweaking. Gauba said this process only works with trust, respect and love.
“Jason has proven that he is not going to let the tradition part down, but then he’s also proven that he can get super-creative. And when you put those two things together, magic happens. And that’s what’s happening here.”
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