KARACHI: Lal Majid, whose Lals Pâtisserie won the prestigious La Liste ‘Pastry Discovery Gem Award’ 2024, said this week it was a “great feeling” to be the only winner from Pakistan, able to be in a room full of world-renowned chefs in Paris wearing a Pakistan pin and traditional salwar kameez. 
La Liste, the world’s most selective global guide of restaurants, pastry shops and hotels, puts out the awards annually, celebrating the “diversity of talents, the creativity and audacity, education, and the commitment to values such as seasonality and biodiversity.”
This year, the platform announced a total of 25 winners from 14 countries across the world in 10 categories. The Canadian Farine & Cacao pastry shop, which has been named one of the top pâtisseries in the world in the past, Chez Dodo, a charming pastry shop near St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest, and Alanya, a pastry shop in Lima’s bohemian Barranco district, also won in the same category as Lals.
Majid got her award at a ceremony held on June 17, 2024, in Paris. She runs the business with her daughter Madiha Sultan Tai, who serves as CEO.
“Till now, I am the first one [from Pakistan to feature on La Liste],” Majid, a florist turned chocolatier, told Arab News in an interview. “We researched if any Pakistani has won this award previously and we learnt that I was the first one to get this award.”
When Majid first started getting email inquiries from La Liste, she thought they were fake.
“I didn’t realize [it was happening] till the time I entered that area,” Majid said, describing the ceremony in Paris where she stood shoulder to shoulder with some of the world’s best chefs and chocolatiers, many of whose creations she had been admiring for years from a distance and whose books she had read and reread.
“I was lucky to get the award. It was all about my pastry [and] my chocolate,” Majid said.
“When it was announced that I was [from] Pakistan, and I was the only one from this area, it was a great feeling, of course. I was wearing my flag. I was wearing my Pakistani shalwar kameez.”
“HANSEL AND GRETEL”
Born and raised in Peshawar, Majid was not very good at studies and got married while she was still in college.
“[As a child,] I loved chocolates. I don’t know why but I was very much inspired by the story of Hansel and Gretel,” Majid said, referring to a German fairy tale in which siblings Hansel and Gretel are abandoned in a forest and fall into the hands of a witch who lives in a bread, cake, and sugar house.
“I always used to dream that I could have a chocolate, biscuit and candy house and I could break [off a piece] and have it myself. But I never thought I’d be able to make a chocolate factory,” the chocolatier said. 
Majid was initially importing chocolate but then started taking classes on how to make it herself.
“I studied and did a lot of courses,” she said. “Then we started making gelatos. We made this [Shahbaz Commercial] outlet. And now, we are making our own chocolate. And the interesting thing is that now our chocolates, except the cocoa mass and cocoa beans which we don’t grow in Pakistan, every ingredient is local and Pakistani.”
Lals has multiple outlets in Karachi and Lahore and in March this year launched an online shop in Dubai, with a small kiosk in a physical outlet also.
“Dubai is a very tough market. It’s very initial so I can’t say anything about the response yet but inshaAllah, soon,” Majid said.
“We are expanding to Islamabad and opening one more outlet in Lahore [soon]. I hope [to launch an outlet] in Peshawar. That’s my hometown. I live in Karachi but my heart is in Peshawar.”

QUETTA: The Counterterrorism Department (CTD) of the police in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province announced in a statement on Friday night it had killed five militants of the proscribed militant network Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in the Surkhab area of Pishin district after a shootout.
Balochistan, a strategic region bordering Iran and Afghanistan, hosts key China-led infrastructure projects, including a port and a gold-copper mine. The province has long grappled with a separatist insurgency, with Baloch militants accusing the central government of exploiting its mineral and gas resources. The Pakistani state denies these allegations, asserting it is working to uplift the region through development initiatives.
Last month, over 50 people were killed in coordinated attacks claimed by one of these militant groups. While the TTP, which emerged from the northwestern tribal areas with Al Qaeda-inspired ideology, does not share the Baloch separatists’ objectives, it has a deadly history of targeting civilians and security forces. Pakistani officials suggest it has also forged ties with Baloch militants, intensifying activities in the southwest.
“Five terrorists belonging the banned TTP were killed during an exchange of fire between the CTD personnel and the terrorists,” a CTD spokesperson, who did not want to be named, told Arab News. “A cache of arms and explosives, including hand grenades, improvised explosive devices and a motorbike were seized from their compound.”
He further, said one of the militants belonged to Spin Boldak, a bordering town in Afghanistan and close to Pakistan’s southwestern bordering city of Chaman.
“The CTD has lodged a first information report of the incident and started looking for other group members in the nearby areas,” he added.
According to the department’s official statement, it received information that five sharpshooters belonging to the TTP were residing in a compound of an Afghan refugee camp in Surkhab and planning militant activities.
The Pakistani security forces have intensified intelligence-based operations in the area since the deadly Balochistan attacks last month.
The federal government on Friday also granted special powers to the army, civilian armed forces and the provincial authorities to combat militants in the region after amending the Anti-Terrorist Act of Pakistan to deal with the uptick in militant violence.