By Jackson Lanzer at The GW Hatchet: Just a few steps away from the Cleveland Park Metro stop sits Dolan Uyghur Restaurant, a gateway to Uyghur culture, history, and cuisine.
Founder Hamid Kerim is bringing the most delicious meals to Washington D.C. and Chantilly VA
Uyghur Muqam, by Ghazi Ahmet, was painted in the 1984 and is one of the famous Uyghur paintings representing Uyghur cultural life. Illustrates a Uyghur community practice that was well in abeyance by the time it was painted.
Why Dolan Uyghur opted to stay open amid the lockdown: The writer Mayukh Sen focusing on how immigrant-owned restaurants across America are coping with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hamid Kerim, who worked in international trade, fled from northwest China in 2017 and opted to start anew in the D.C. region with a career as a restaurateur. He bought Dolan Uyghur, whose Cleveland Park location is shown here, in late 2018 from another Uyghur family who had founded it.
Is anybody interested in our branding story? Uyghurs traditional Badam Doppa is one of our culture's most iconic elements. It represents centuries of Uyghur's conventional embroidery techniques and ethnic identity.
Restaurants are often a benign starting point to learning about different cultures. But food, drinks and hospitality can be used to educate people about the loss of one’s culture too.
For many who walk through the doors of Dolan Uyghur in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the restaurant is a learning experience — through food on the tables, art on the walls, and conversations with the owner.