HK: Tell me about where you grew up. Did food play a big part of your daily life? Was it influenced by your home life or city life or both?

FM: I grew up in Greenville, NC, a small university town of fifty thousand people (in the 1980s at least) in Eastern North Carolina. It was very much a typical Southern town then – our local prides were our whole hog BBQ, chopped pork sandwiches, the ECU Pirates (college football), Little League baseball teams and tobacco fields.. Food was life, both at home and in the community. In all of my worlds – Desi, Muslim, Southern. It anchored our daily schedules, memories, community events and emotions. Being raised by a mother and grandmother that let me hang in the kitchen with them was a blessing. I learned the importance of feeding, the pleasure of discovering new foods to try, the underlying andaaza se* approach to everything. In life. My memories tend to focus on situations where food was involved, in the U.S., in India.

I guess the best way, though, to answer the question is to tell you what I hope to eat every time I go back to Greenville, NC. My ammi’s cooking. Drive-through japanese hibachi (it’s a thing). A chicken biscuit and fries at Bojangles. A burger tray plus a shake from Cook Out. A shrimp burger from Cubbies. My aunt’s mash ki daal and gobi with tiny kofte. The huarache from El Azador. Bbq chicken from B’s Barbecue. Bharti Auntie’s rajma chawal and falafel. Rita Auntie’s broccoli casserole. Corn sticks and fried okra from Parker’s. Ok, a few fried chicken legs and some half sweet /half unsweet  tea too. An extremely fresh & hot Krispy Kreme glazed donut so it melts in your mouth. Anything from Dixie Queen seafood restaurant. A gas station egg & cheese biscuit. Home-made bhutta made with local corn. Halal Chinese for Eid parties at China 10, whose previous owner was a Chinese man that had lived in India and could speak perfect Hindi. Dar Uncle’s Pakistani Chinese chicken and his wife Parveen Aunti’s qeema. Brother Yusuf’s catfish & trout, fried in a cast iron cauldron probably older than I am.  

HK: You write a lot about food as it ties to identity. Do you feel like your heritage and time in the US play an equal role? Are they ever at odds with one another?

FM: It’s a continual journey. Sometimes they’re in harmony. Sometimes in direct, open hostility. I think they do play equal roles in that I grew up in America in an emphatically cultural Indian Muslim immigrant home with a really diverse local Muslim American community. I’ve had nearly lifelong body dysmorphia and that often threw (still does) a wrench into my eating and identity. (A food writer with body dysmorphia? I know there’s a well-crafted joke in there somewhere.) Food is how I know where I am, where home is, where the outside begins. I could celebrate myself with it, retreat from the world into it, retreat from myself even. Still, it did feel seamless more often than not, at least in the beginning. Desi omelettes tucked into fast food biscuits was a weekend staple for my family. I loved taking bhindi sandwiches (my creation) for school lunch. I also remember the pride I had while fasting in Ramadan as a teen in the U.S. I was an awesome student and a beast on the tennis team, all without drinking water. As if being Muslim was a secret superpower. I felt powerful.

I was a senior in college during 9/11 and saw all the hope, equity Muslims had been building for decades crumbling in front of my eyes. That very day I bought my first food writing book and a copy of Food & Wine magazine. A pure form of escapism that helped me reestablish my boundaries. But my identities never were/are as seamless as I hoped they would be. The other day I found myself writing about how Islamophobia just forces the Islam out of you. Like toothpaste from a tube. I’ll say I’m more of a cultural Muslim than a practicing one. But whether I’m an Indian Muslim or Muslim American, both India and America are quite smitten with Islamophobia these days. And so I find myself praying more (i.e. 0 to 1, baby steps). I’m just a lot more conscious about “our” people and it’s frustrating that the struggle always continues. But I’ll always keep fighting. 

HK: Why do you think food has become as important a topic as it is now. Is it because we are looking for ways to connect during an arguably lonely period, or are we perhaps at the frontier of a totally new era for dining?

FM: That’s a great point… I venture it’s partly looking for ways to connect during bouts of loneliness. I do think once the pandemic forced us to face ourselves, the content and opinions around part of the act of eating became such a key part of our daily lives. We had to actively think of meals; planning for them, cooking, getting basic staples became a daily practice. The act of eating itself became so much more intentional and interesting merely because the burden was on us to switch it up. And then we had more time to just look at our phones all day for inspiration and TikTok hacks took over.

We’re at a point where there are no rules or institutions that matter as much as friends, families and people we follow. Food rules aren’t gone per se but are mashed across cultures and generations in really exciting ways. It’s just fun to see it all play out. Going high or going low in eating is the same now – it’s all in the pursuit of unabashed, maximum pleasure. 

I’ll think of how streetwear influences high fashion and it very much feels similar. We all have our food styles and we’re discovering new fits every day.

HK: What are your favorite restaurants & places to eat in the US?

FM: Uff.. “favorite” questions pertaining to food are impossible to answer (pour moi). So before you read the answers to this question and the next, reader, know this: it’s all about context. And memories. I think of homes, places and the people cooking.

So where do I like to eat in the US? What I enjoy most is family, so I’d start with my parent’s home, my little brother’s home, my partner’s kitchen. My sister-in-law Saima is one of the best cooks on Earth, hands down; my cousin Muneeb is one of the most inventive cooks I know. Digitally, I’ll eat by lurking on the Halal BBQ Pitmasters WhatsApp channel, drooling at pics of brisket, biryani, kababs.

Of course I love fast food joints. Bojangle’s and Cook Out, a Southern burger chain are my favorites. Any good Southern buffet chain, local “meat & threes” or a diner. Like Golden Corral, or Elmo’s Diner in Durham, NC, or the old Mama Dip’s in Chapel Hill, NC, or the Bright Star Restaurant in Bessemer, AL, or my current favorite, the restaurant at the NC State Farmers Market in Raleigh, NC. Any place with great okra. They’re all places where the food ranges from good enough to amazing, and they’re places where communities gather. I adore spaces like that. I miss Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC, a bookstore, coffee shop, diner and performance space that was always buzzing with good smells and the energy of trying to change the world. Uff, now I’m thinking of more DC places I miss like Ravi Kabob, Kabob Palace, the original Five Guys, Jaleo, Zaytinya and Ted’s Bulletin.

I still dream of Birds of a Feather (Sichuan) in Brooklyn, NY. I love any good family-run American Chinese place in any town, because I appreciate entrepreneurship and value. I’ll happily eat at any halal bodega or deli in NYC with a great chicken cutlet sandwich or chopped cheese or chicken & rice. Good biscuits are another category for me. Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen in Chapel Hill, esp their veggie biscuit. Bryant’s biscuits in Memphis, TN. There are so many gas stations with good biscuits, it’s hard to keep track. The deep pan biscuits at Beasley’s Chicken & Honey in Raleigh, NC. Monuts in Durham, NC, for their biscuits and donuts.

Zain Shafi’s take on Pakistani Texas BBQ at Sabar BBQ in Fort Worth, TX – his seekh kabab sausage is worth a special flight from Dubai. Assaggio, an Italian place in Seattle, for the homey vibe more than the excellent cooking. The fried catfish at Backyard BBQ in Durham, NC and at the Shell gas station in Beacon Hill, Seattle, WA.

I’ll greedily try any first/second/third generation immigrant mashup, popup or ghost kitchen. Like I said, this is a hard question to answer and probably annoying to read.  (Editor’s note – it’s absolutely wonderful to read & we will publish a separate list of every eatery Farhan has mentioned in the article!)

HK: What are your favorite restaurants & places to eat internationally?

FM: Internationally assumes I am a worldly traveler and I appreciate the implication. Any KFC overseas. Al Majles in Doha. Also the Burger King fish sandwich in the Gulf. Everything I ate in Istanbul was something to swoon over, from kaymak on toast to grilled fish sandwiches to the kebaps at Durumzade. Every bite of food I had in Mexico. Black-eyed peas & rice & vinagrete (basically Brazilian kachumbar) in Northern Brazil. And Brazilian chicken, shrimp or crab coxinhas (like a fritter/samosa hybrid). But then I’ll think of chaat in Delhi and Lucknow. Galawati kabobs; fresh sheermal; sending out for kulchay nihari on the weekends. Chai from clay cups at train station stops (the best way to drink it). Having the chicken kadahi at a random place in London my friend Yamin took me to. Or wandering through Borough Market with my friend Ahsan, eating cheese sandwiches, chip butties and having a proper scone for the first time.  

HK: Writing and cooking help people of the diaspora connect the dots when they feel lost – what other activities / sub-cultures / hobbies do you turn to, to help make sense of our increasingly complex world?

FM: I sense this will reveal how few hobbies I have outside of food… I like to volunteer as a cook at food kitchens because I believe in the act of feeding and value learning lessons from other people too. Creatively, I feel this kinship with any brown writer or visual artist or fashion designer, and I’ve made connections with humbling, amazingly talented people. Personally I will dabble in graffiti and making sweatshirts for my non-existent brand, Fish Burger. Comedy – whether joke writing or making funny videos with friends no one will ever see – is my coping system. That and food is how I make sense of the world and respond instinctively to everything.

HK: What is your favorite of the “Bubba Gump-ish” list of immigrant spaghetti?

FM: This is mathematically impossible to answer. Every spaghetti has its merits. I think the most memorable might be all the ones that were present at our masjid potluck during Ramadan – the ones that made me realize how one dish can take so many forms. Otherwise, like most immigrants, I’d say my version is my favorite.

HK: If you could mandate one piece of food writing (book, article, textbook, cookbook, etc.) for everyone, which one would it be?

FM: Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. It’s everything – juicy, a cooking technique tome, an insider’s account, a critique, a glorification, a reckoning, vulgar & offensive, intensely personal, helpfully macro, entertaining, essential. As with everything though, that choice is based entirely on context. It was the second food-writing book I ever read, a week after 9/11, in my senior year of college. I was a waiter & a prep cook then too at a local fancy restaurant. So the book was entrancing, a portal into a world I was beginning to understand. An escape from knowing how f*cked Muslims’ lives (everywhere) would surely become. A tale of an underdog. someone who struggled with addiction (I have too) and was honest about his demons. Food writing did change (for the better) after his book came out. 

If I could really mandate anything though, it’s not even a piece of work per se – it’s a conversation. Ask your family members for a recipe and hope that it becomes a lengthy tale of reminiscence. I love reading cookbooks and recipes but I care less about the quantities and precision, and more about recognizing patterns. Talking with the cooks in your family – it’s about the transition of knowledge, of context, of why. You’re not just learning a recipe, you’re learning generational instincts as you discover yourself.