Pak Tea House

Located on the historic Mall Road near the Lahore Museum and many colleges, this restaurant was originally the India Tea House from the early 1930s, and was a meeting place for leading intellectuals and writers. Renamed the Pak Tea House after the Partition, the cafe remains known for its historic association with progressive academics and left leaning South Asian intelligentsia, before and after 1947. These include names who are widely considered among the most important twentieth-century Urdu writers and poets, such as Ahmed Faraz, Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, Amrita Pritam, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Habib Jalib, Ibn-e-Insha, Intezar Husain, Ismat Chughtai, Krishan Chander, and Saadat Hasan Manto.