Our Rockville restaurant was nineteen days old when it hosted its first community dinner. On August 28, 2025, Yelp's DMV Dinner Party series — a run of themed evenings at restaurants across the Washington region, organized by Yelp's Maryland community team — came to 20-A Maryland Avenue under a title we loved: "Fly to Central Asia."
The theme was the brief, and our kitchen's job was to make it literal with the dishes that define every Dolan menu — hand-pulled noodles, kebabs from the tandoor, polow rice with carrots and golden raisins, samsa and manta, and pots of Dolan Gul Chai, the caffeine-free floral tea that ends every Uyghur meal. The dining room itself did half the work — eighty-eight seats under gold-ornamented globe lights, with a display of Uyghur cultural pieces greeting guests at the door.
For a brand-new restaurant, an evening like this is a gift. It introduces the room to the region's most engaged diners all at once, and it lets our team tell the story behind the food — why a Uyghur restaurant group exists in the DMV, and why its founder, Hamid Kerim, believes a shared table can do what headlines cannot.
When the DMV Dinner Party series wrapped up in October 2025, Yelp's organizers shared their favorite photographs from the season, and Dolan was among them. We are grateful to have been part of it — and to everyone who flew to Central Asia with us that Thursday night.
The flight departs daily: Rockville is open Monday and Tuesday 11 am – 9 pm and Wednesday through Sunday 11 am – 10 pm.
This article is our own account of the coverage; short quotations are attributed to Yelp (DMV Dinner Party), which holds the copyright to the original piece.
