When the Washington Business Journal looked at how the pandemic had treated the region's small businesses, it found that immigrant owners faced the hardest version of the same choice: close and risk losing everything, or stay open through a health crisis nobody understood. In September 2021, contributing writer Jin Ni told that story through several owners. One of them was Hamid Kerim.
By then, Dolan in Cleveland Park had gone eighteen months without closing its doors for a single day. "I work hard every day. I have to pay my rent," Hamid told the Journal through a translator. "My whole life depends on this restaurant — my wife, my kids, very nice people who work in my restaurant who want to continue to work."
The article traced how he got there: a career in international trade, a flight from northwest China in 2017, and a decision to start again in the Washington region as a restaurateur. He bought Dolan from the Uyghur family who founded it in late 2018, and — the Journal noted — had just opened its "Chantilly cousin" that summer. "In my country, I am a businessman," Hamid said. "So, I think, maybe restaurant business will be good for my life and my family. Maybe [Dolan Uyghur] will also let Americans know about the culture and food culture of my people, and what is happening to them."
He also talked about what the restaurant did during the lockdown months. "During the pandemic, we delivered free food to a hospital and to soldiers, and a lot of people were happy about this. I love this country. I think about how this country give me and my kids free education, a free life. Now my dream is to do something for this country, and I teach my kids that too."
One number in the piece stayed with us. In an average year before the pandemic, Hamid estimated, nearly 40,000 customers ate at Dolan — nearly all of them American-born. Each one of those meals was, in his mind, a chance to connect his new country to his roots.
That is still the arithmetic behind everything we do. Five dining rooms later, the goal is the same as it was on Connecticut Avenue in 2020: keep the doors open, feed the neighborhood, and tell the story one table at a time.
This article is our own account of the coverage; short quotations are attributed to Washington Business Journal, which holds the copyright to the original piece.
