Before the pandemic changed everything, we spent one Sunday in February 2020 doing exactly what Dolan was created to do: introducing a room full of neighbors to Uyghur culture over a long meal.
The evening was organized with Open Kitchen D.C., a community project that connects curious locals with immigrant-owned restaurants in Washington and Northern Virginia. Hamid Kerim co-hosted. A musician played traditional Uyghur songs while guests found their seats. Our chef, Murat Kurban, brought a sheet of dough into the dining room and showed everyone how laghman noodles are stretched and pulled by hand — the step that gives them the chew our regulars recognize. Then Hamid stood up and told his own story: leaving East Turkistan in 2017, arriving in Northern Virginia with his family, and buying this restaurant the following year as a way to speak for his people through food.
More than twenty-five guests attended, and — as the Falls Church News-Press later reported — "the attendees told their friends, who then told their friends, about a culture and cuisine they didn't know about before."
The plan was to make it a monthly series. Weeks later, large gatherings were paused by the pandemic, and the series was put on hold. The partnership did not stop, though: through 2020, the same organizers helped us coordinate hundreds of Uyghur-style meals for doctors and nurses at local hospitals.
We still host evenings like this one — Yelp Elite dinners, book launches, live music nights in Falls Church — because the formula works. Put noodles on the table, play the music, and tell the story. People lean in.
This article is our own account of the coverage; short quotations are attributed to Falls Church News-Press (Open Kitchen D.C. event coverage), which holds the copyright to the original piece.
