Long before Dolan opened on S. Maple Avenue, the Falls Church News-Press came to Cleveland Park. In November 2020, reporter Trisha Ahmed spent several days at our Connecticut Avenue restaurant, and her December 2 article remains the most complete telling of Hamid Kerim's story in print.
She began with what guests see: "Dark green canopies and two-story windows framed with cushions," colorful Uyghur hats and small wooden instruments on the walls, portraits of dancing people, and air "filled with scents of cumin and pepper from the kitchen." For many who walk in, she wrote, the restaurant "is a learning experience — through food on the tables, art on the walls, and conversations with the owner." For others — Uyghurs far from a home they cannot return to — "the restaurant is a place to feel at home again."
Hamid, then 39, poured her a cup of Uyghur tea, "amber liquid swirling with deep-orange flower petals and cardamom pods," while a server set down a plate of goshnan. He spoke in a mix of Uyghur and the English he was still improving, and he explained why he had filled the room with purpose. "Genocide killing Uyghurs' culture, history, medicine, everything," he said, gesturing to the instruments on the wall.
The article recounts his family's history: a brother imprisoned in 1997 for a demonstration, released fifteen years later, then taken again in 2017 along with his wife; three children now raised by Hamid's mother; a friend's warning that Hamid's own name was "on a list"; the flight to the United States and a new home in Chantilly, Virginia, where he and his wife welcomed a third child. "In new calmness," Ahmed wrote.
She also documented how Dolan had spent 2020: the Open Kitchen D.C. event in February, when chef Murat Kurban taught more than twenty-five guests to pull noodles, and the hundreds of Uyghur-style meals delivered to doctors and nurses at local hospitals during the pandemic. In her kitchen photograph, Hamid and our chef present a fresh plate of Korma Chop and a Kazan Kebab.
At the end, Hamid told her about his next step: a second Dolan near his home in Chantilly, which opened the following summer. Three years after that, the News-Press would welcome our third restaurant to its own city.
This article is our own account of the coverage; short quotations are attributed to Falls Church News-Press, which holds the copyright to the original piece.
