This excerpt was originally published in Pre Shift, our newsletter for the hospitality industry. Subscribe for more first-person accounts, advice, and interviews.
Now Open is a yearlong series celebrating some of 2026’s most exciting new restaurants. Throughout the year, we’ll check in with teams in Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., to hear what it’s really like behind the scenes of a buzzy opening. Then, we’ll host exclusive meals at these restaurants as part of Dinner Party, presented by Capital One. Read along for challenges, candid reflections, and advice from the proprietors behind some of the country’s hottest new openings.
Zubair Mohajir is one of Chicago’s most prolific new chefs and restaurateurs, behind such openings as Lilac Tiger, Mariela, Mirra, Sarima, and most recently, Muhājir, a restaurant that traces historical spice routes to tell the story of global migration. I talked to Mohajir about how the opening is going, how he thinks about collaboration across his different projects, and why Muhājir is finally the restaurant that feels like home.
Pre Shift: What did you want to explore with Muhājir that you hadn’t been able to do yet with your previous restaurants?
Zubair Mohajir: Muhājir is such a personal story for me, because my last name is Mohajir, and the meaning of “muhājir” in Arabic and Urdu is “one who migrates.” When the partition [of India and Pakistan] happened, the Muslims that were moved from India to Pakistan were named Muhājirs because they were migrated. In my family, we always wondered why that was our last name. When I started cooking [after working in finance], it really started to settle in. Our late maternal grandfather was obsessed with mapping where this family name came from. It comes from Southern Basra, Iraq, and that was so mind-blowing for me because it’s one of the biggest spice roads.
At Coach House for the past five years, I’ve been exploring ancient recipes in southern Spain and southern Portugal. [They] bring in pre-Crusade Muslim, Christian, Jewish [influences] that are also affected by the Southeast Asian traders coming on the spice road that shoots through the Mediterranean and hits North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. I’m just obsessed with history and it started to become very evident for me that I really wanted to feed people, but with the context of where the food came from.
At Muhājir, it’s all about riding the spice road that runs from Portugal through the Mediterranean, through the Levantine [region], and then hits out of Basra, Iraq, into the Persian Gulf, and the first landmass it comes across is southern India, where I’m from. We’re all muhājirs — you know, all of our families came from somewhere, and that really has been the driving force for me.
Why did you decide to build the restaurant around live fire?
I’d never cooked on live fire, but we’re cooks, and it was going back to core things. I remember growing up in my grandmother’s house back home in India, and it’s not like there were gas stoves everywhere. When I decided that I was going to do Muhājir, it became so obvious to me that it couldn’t just be a sauté pan on a stove. The story that we wanted to tell had to be told through wood fire.
Is there a dish that feels especially representative of Muhājir?
We do a duck that is inspired by a 927-year-old recipe we found from southern Spain that is influenced by Roman garums, Muslim origins, and Jewish origins. We do this duck “experience,” where we take a whole duck, butcher it, and have the crown dry-aging for seven days. We take the wings and make a jus [and] take the legs and make a confit. We blast that duck crown over the fire when we start service every day, and then it gets finished in the brasa. If you’re sitting in the restaurant, you can see the ducks hanging over the fire.
When we present it, we have this beautiful ornate Turkish platter. There’s black raspberry achaar, the duck jus in a saucier, the duck rice next to it, the duck skin cut in these beautiful medallions on top almost like duck chicharrón, and then we’re also presenting the duck breast itself that has a very crispy skin. The top of that duck breast is the spice mix from that exact recipe that’s more than 900 years old, with cumin, coriander, cardamom, toasted pine nuts, red wine vinegar, and fish sauce. It’s a story of cross-cultural collaboration.
You have a bar called Bobo behind the restaurant. How do the two spaces complement each other?
Bobo’s really inspired by Jacob Dela Cruz, who’s my partner here. We built Sarima together, and it became very important to me to highlight his upbringing and his background as well. He was one who said, “You should name the restaurant Muhājir.” His point was that we’re all immigrants. I was like, “That’s such a simple statement, but such a profound statement.” It was kind of vice versa when we were talking about the bar: Jacob’s father is an amazing person and his name is Bho, and “bobo” in Tagalog means “silly” or “stupid,” as a term of endearment. We always say that as Spice Road-driven and transformative the food experience at Muhājir is, we still like to have fun.
If people are early for their reservation, we take them back to Bobo, or they stop by after dinner. You can’t get to Bobo without walking through the restaurant, so the spaces contribute to each other. If you came to Bobo, you might be like, “I want to eat there.” And if you come straight to Muhājir and see people walking back constantly, you might be like, “What’s happening back there?”
What has it been like to run Muhājir so far?
I wouldn’t say it’s easier [than my other restaurants], but now I don’t freak out. I’ve created a methodical way of approaching issues or problems head-on and figuring it out as a group or with the people that support us. We don’t have investors who are private equity firms; our investors are our guests. When it comes to managing expectations and navigating obstacles, you get better with repetition.
I’m living a dream. Sometimes, when you’re building restaurants with others, you’re not necessarily in the kitchen. [At Mirra, I] was like, “I’m helping create and build this concept, but that’s [chef Rishi Kumar’s] kitchen to run.” Here, it’s the home that I’ve been yearning for and working toward my whole career. I plan to be old in this place. Things have been so crazy and wild and amazing, but slowly, every day, I sit more and more in that moment where I’m like, “This is home.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.