ZAREEN'S OPENS A FOURTH KITCHEN

Twelve years after the first sold-out cooking class in Saratoga, Zareen Khan is opening her fourth Pakistani-Indian restaurant. This one is in Sunnyvale, currently in soft opening, dialing in excellence in quality and service before the official launch. The shami kebabs are still hand-rolled the way her mother taught her.

The samosas land on the prep counter at 8:47 a.m., still warm from the kitchen behind the new Sunnyvale storefront. Zareen Khan picks one up, breaks it open, examines the filling. “Memoni,” she says. “Only a few grandmothers know this recipe. We’re one of them.” She offers half to her husband Umair, who has been with her on every kitchen since the first one opened in Mountain View in March 2014.

The Sunnyvale location is mid-soft-opening. Doors are open. The line is real. The point of the soft opening, the thing every team member has been told to focus on, is dialing in excellence in quality and service before the official launch. Every plate that goes out is being tasted by Zareen before it leaves the pass. Every cup of chai is being timed. Every hello at the host stand is being watched. Soft openings exist for one reason, to find the things that break only when real customers walk in.

Before there was a restaurant, there was a cooking class in Saratoga. The classes sold out. Before there were classes, there were twelve years in corporate America. Before there was corporate, there was Karachi. Then Bombay. Then Punjab. Her mother, her aunts, her sister.

The thesis has not changed since 2011, when she founded Curry Village Foods to give Bay Area Pakistani and Indian cuisine an all-natural makeover. Rid offices of preservative-laden lunches. Make South Asian food the way it is actually made at home. Hand-roll the kebabs. Cup the curry by the spoon. The catering clients now include Google, Stanford, Microsoft, PayPal, ServiceNow, Nvidia, Lightspeed, Khosla Ventures. The restaurant clients are the kids in Mountain View who walk over from school, the tech workers from the Googleplex, the families perusing the lending library Zareen keeps in the corner.

“One of the reasons why I’m doing what I’m doing,” Zareen told Verde Magazine in a 2024 interview, “is that I want people to see an immigrant family and how they’re contributing to society, and their hospitality and their culture. I don’t want just Pakistanis coming, I don’t want just Indians coming. I want people from all over the world enjoying the cuisine. Bring peace and harmony with food.”

The food has its own grammar. The chicken Memoni samosas: a family recipe known to a select number of grandmothers, the Michelin Guide said in 2020, when Zareen’s made the Top 100 list for San Francisco. The chicken shami kebabs: juicy, caramelized, on a bed of basmati that the SF Chronicle’s Soleil Ho called “homestyle” in her 2021 Top 25. The gola kabab paratha roll, which one customer wrote on the wall is better than anything he ate on the Indian subcontinent. The halwa-puri breakfast, which a reader from Lake County drove three hours for and said tasted like Karachi.

At the table during the soft opening

At a window two-top mid-afternoon, Jonathan Tan, a longtime Palo Alto regular, is testing the new waters. He drove down when he saw the soft opening go up.

“I have been religious about the Palo Alto location for years. That chicken tikka masala is basically a weekly thing. When I heard Sunnyvale was opening soft, I drove down to see if the kitchen carried over. The space feels different. More open, more light. But the first bite tasted exactly like home. They did not lose anything in the move. The spice ran cleaner today than I expected, if anything. Palo Alto is still my first love. This place is already its own.”

Two tables over, Edward Kim is eating alone. He lives three blocks away. He had not heard of Zareen’s an hour ago.

“I walked in because I saw the soft opening sign on the window. I had no plan. I ordered the sabri khichri and a mango lassi because the person at the counter was talking about both like she meant it. It is not restaurant food. It tastes like someone who knows the dish made it on purpose. The chai is the kind you smell before you taste. I live three blocks away. I am not going to be cooking dinner this week.”

Two different relationships to the room. Same conclusion at the table.

What the chain is, and what it is not

The cookbook came out in January. Zareen’s Pakistani Kitchen: Recipes from a Well-Fed Childhood. The recipes are the ones her mother taught her. The kitchen is the one her daughter watches her in. The chain is not really a chain. It is the same kitchen, four times.

Sunnyvale is the fourth location. The third was Redwood City. The second was Palo Alto, which opened October 2016, eighteen months after Mountain View hit capacity. Each new location has been word of mouth. Each new location has been the same recipes. Each new location has been Zareen at the prep counter at 8:47 a.m., breaking open the samosa, checking the filling, deciding whether it can go out.

She has been asked, in every interview since 2018, why she keeps doing this. The honest answer, the one she gave to Verde Magazine and to Stanford Daily and to Palo Alto Online and that anyone who has been in the Mountain View dining room past 10 p.m. has heard her say in some version, is the line that anchors this piece. Here, even after 14 hours of work, she does not feel tired. She is full of energy. The high from the work, the one she never experienced in corporate, lives in this room. It lives in the people who walk in and become regulars. It lives in the recipes that have not changed since 2011 because they did not need to.

The soft opening at Sunnyvale is underway. The official launch follows. The first batch of memoni samosas is already cooling. The lending library is on its way over from Mountain View. The wall is blank, for now, but Zareen knows what will go there. Customers will write their thanks. They always do.

If you live within driving distance, go during the soft opening. The food is being tasted before it leaves the pass. The team is taking notes. The point of going while a kitchen is still calibrating is that this is the moment it decides what it is going to be for the next five years. Most people only get to taste the answer. During a soft opening, you get to taste the question.

Sources for Zareen Khan quoted material in this piece:

• Verde Magazine: “Zareen: Cuisines for community”
• Stanford Daily: “Q&A: Zareen’s Restaurant founder discusses inspiration, Michelin Guide status”
• Palo Alto Online: “Q&A with Zareen and Umair Khan on their new cookbook”

“Here, even after 14 hours of work, I don't feel tired. I'm full of energy. You know how sometimes you get a high from work? I never experienced that until I opened this restaurant.”

ZAREEN KHAN, CHEF AND OWNER