A laid-off product manager turned a bodega classic into a Pakistani flavor bomb, and New York cannot get enough.
Sometimes the best thing that happens to a person looks, at first, like the worst. For nearly a decade Zeeshan Bakhrani worked in product management while chasing his culinary ambitions on the side. Then came the layoffs, two of them. Instead of hunting for the next corporate job, the 34-year-old went all-in on Nishaan, his East Village restaurant serving Pakistani-American street food, and the gamble has New York City lining up.
Nishaan’s Pakistani chopped cheese is the dish that made his name, a Pakistani take on the classic New York bodega sandwich. It has become the kind of food people travel for, built by a man who describes his menu simply as all the flavors he grew up with from both cultures. “I’m Pakistani, I’m American,” he says. “I’m going to embrace parts of both.”
The sandwich is a true mashup. Bakhrani keeps the shape and comfort of the New York chopped cheese, then rebuilds its soul with the spices of a Pakistani chapli kebab.
How the Pakistani chopped cheese was born
The food grew straight out of Bakhrani’s childhood kitchen. He grew up in Devon, a diverse part of Chicago where he could find Indian, Pakistani, Polish, Bosnian and Mexican food on every corner. His mother cooked without rules, turning chapli kebab into sandwiches on white bread with ketchup and mayo, or spiking store-bought pasta sauce with onions, hot sauce, chili powder and coriander seeds. He picked up the same instinct around seventh grade, sitting in front of Food Network and thinking he could recreate those dishes with a different spice cabinet.
That experimenting became a style. He would make quesadillas with paratha or roti instead of tortillas, or season a burger with cumin, coriander and chili powder and top it with a sauce built from chutneys. His guiding question never changed: how do you make these flavors work together in a way that honors both dishes.
His signature sandwich is the clearest answer. As he puts it, it is not a kebab slapped into a sandwich but a full re-envisioning. Green bell peppers and onions hit the grill alongside a chapli kebab patty seasoned with a dozen spices, then the mix gets smashed, chopped and topped with pepper jack and American cheese, before landing on a buttered, toasted hero slathered with mayonnaise, tamarind chutney and lime cilantro sauce. Starting from familiar foods like a chopped cheese or tacos, he says, gives newcomers some idea of what to expect even if Pakistani flavors are new to them.
Why Nishaan’s chapli kebab sandwich went viral
The path to a storefront ran through some lean months. After his first layoff in November 2023, Bakhrani could not find work and was running low on unemployment benefits, so he dipped into savings and started doing food popups in Dallas, Chicago and North Brunswick, New Jersey. He found full-time work again in July 2024, then began selling at Smorgasburg, the New York City food market, a few weeks later.
That opened the door to Food Network’s “The Great Food Truck Race,” where his inexperienced team pulled off a win and split a $50,000 prize.
The praise online has been just as loud. One diner who visited the East Village spot called the sandwich FIRE!
Another went further, joking that the existence of the Pakistani chopped cheese was proof America was the greatest country in the world.
The victory convinced him it was time. Bakhrani put $70,000 of savings toward the deposit, electrical work, appliances and remodeling to open Nishaan in August, where he now pays $6,150 a month in rent. November turned out to be the turning point in more ways than one. It was the restaurant’s best month yet, bringing in roughly $140,000 in revenue, and it was also the month he got laid off from his corporate job a second time. He remembers taking it as a sign that he was not meant to be in the corporate world anymore.
Now working days that often stretch to 14 hours, Bakhrani sees Nishaan as a community space, tiny but warm enough to share a meal with friends or family. He has felt a strong lift from South Asian customers championing the place, and he wants to pay it forward, openly sharing his recipes on Instagram and TikTok so more people can taste the food, riff on it and make their own versions. His hope is that this flavor profile keeps spreading until it becomes a normal part of American cuisine.
