5 days ago
Find Glorious Pakistani Chopped Cheeses at This East Village Restaurant
is a born-and-raised New Yorker who is an editor for Eater's Northeast region and Eater New York, was the former Eater Austin editor for 10 years, and often writes about food and pop culture.
The chopped cheese sandwich is a New York City bodega mainstay. Burger patties are chopped and grilled together with spices, onions, and American cheese, turning into a glorious gloopy mess, paired with tomatoes, lettuce, and mayo, and placed in a hero or kaiser roll. And now there's a new restaurant aiming to offer a South Asian spin to the classic city sandwich, as first reported by EV Grieve, swapping a burger patty for chapli kebab. Nishaan will open in the East Village at 160 First Avenue, between Ninth Street and 10th streets, sometime this summer.
Owner Zeeshan Bakhrani's approach to building Nishaan's halal menu stems from his upbringing. 'Looking at the dishes I enjoyed growing up as a Pakistani kid and an American kid,' Nishaan says, and figuring out how to 'combine them in a way that honors both dishes and it's not just two dishes slapped together,' he says.
Take the star of Nishaan's halal menu: He didn't just want to take a chapli kebab and place it into a burger bun. He thought about the DNAs of the patty-shaped kebab and a chopped cheese, taking the chapli kebab spices like adobo and cinnamon, cooking the meat on a griddle, mixing in pepper jack and American cheese, and dropping it all in a hoagie. (He thought about swapping in a paratha, the flaky South Asian round bread, but decided it would be too much.) In addition to the chapli kebab chopped cheese, he's making a Buffalo chicken iteration with tandoori spices.
The bihari barbacoa tacos at Nishaan. Nishaan
'I like combining cultures,' Bakhrani says. He explains how cultural dishes have morphed into something different because a main element wasn't available, or there are other ingredients that work better. 'The invention of the dishes themselves is through some sort of limitations,' using what is available, he says.
Bakhrani is also making bihari barbacoa tacos, for which the tender, smoky shredded beef is cooked with bihari spices, topped with a tamarind salsa, resulting in a 'smoky chipotle taco,' he describes. And his elotes chaat combines Mexican and South Asian snacks. He tops corn with tamarind chutney, chaat masala, a lime-cilantro sauce, bhel (crispy rice), and cotija. It's 'the greatest thing I ever made,' he says.
The forthcoming restaurant will also offer loaded fries, like the Noom Dhoom masala with an achari mayonnaise and a chopped cheese iteration.
Bakhrani isn't stopping at savory items. He's riffing on a viral dessert with the Dubai chocolate paratha. He plans on creating what he describes as a 'funnel cake-ish' version where he will deep-fry the paratha, add powdered sugar, pistachio sauce, hazelnut sauce, and kadayif (shredded crispy filo). It's 'nutty, chocolatey, flaky,' he says. 'We describe it as a flash croissant.'
There are drinks too. He's making a gulab jamun cold foam, a take on the syrupy South Asian dessert. His comes with cardamom coffee topped with a saffron cardamom rosewater cold foam and dehydrated gulab jamuns. Then there's the strawberry rosa sago milkshake, for which he makes strawberry coconut rosa jellies, mixed with strawberry ice cream.
The elotes chaat at Nishaan. Nishaan
Before Nishaan, Bakhrani had been making food on his own for a while as he worked in finance product management.. He had already done a food collaboration with halal mini-chain Namkeen, resulting in the garam masala hot chicken in 2023. He also ran pop-ups in his hometown of Chicago as well as Dallas.
But Bakhrani got laid off in 2024 and had to figure out what he wanted to do. 'I know how to cook, I know how to sell food,' Bakhrani tells Eater, so, on a whim, he applied to be a vendor at Smorgasburg. To his surprise, he got accepted and started the stall in late August 2024.
His Smorgasburg signage emphasized the sandwich, calling the stand the 'home of the Pakistani chopped cheese,' which was intentional. 'I heard somebody walk by, and they were like, 'Oh, I don't know what Pakistani food is, but I've had a chopped cheese. I want to try that,'' he recounts. 'I'm like, 'Yes, that's exactly what I wanted: food that is familiar but different.'
With the pop-ups and lack of a day job, he wanted to open something of his own. 'I'm the kid of immigrants,' he says, 'there's nothing but work in my brain.' A restaurant front allowed him a permanent space to cook, experiment, hire staff, and interact with customers.
The small counter-service restaurant will have about 10 to 14 seats. The design will take its cues from the Wazir Khan mosque in Lahore, emphasizing floral geometric shapes, Bakhrani explains. There's an inherited arch structure from the address's predecessor, Mexican restaurant Sabor A Mexico Taqueria.
'I want to leave a mark on the cuisine, but I want people to have that feeling of, 'Hey this is going to be my comfort food spot, when I'm hungry; when I'm thirsty; when I want something that satisfies the soul; I come here and eat it.' The restaurant's name means 'mark' in Urdu, because he wants his food to leave an impression.
