Sharing fond memories of Lahore and his school, Hussain remembers himself to, although do well in school, also be a naughty boy. “I got into a lot of trouble too. I remember running away when I was in class 7 or 8, to go to the zoo, Lakshmi Chowk to eat takatak, and even Cocoo’s Den with friends on foggy winter nights in A-levels. I would also go out to get qeemay-wali naan from somewhere on The Mall Road. All these things in some shape or form are represented in the New Punjab Club. Lahore is a big part of my identity, who I am, and what I do. In a lot of ways, the restaurant should have been the first to have opened up when I started Black Sheep Restaurants six years ago. But its story is so personal and important to me, that maybe back then, I didn’t have the confidence. It’s like a filmmaker making a personal film, or a writer telling a personal story. Maybe I needed the confidence to tell the story,” he reminisces.
After finishing school, Hussain went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to study finance. After graduating in 2007, he says he wasn’t sure about what he wanted to do.
“Everyone else was working at an investment bank, so thought I should do too. I moved to New York, picked up a job and lived there for five years. But the pull to move back to Hong Kong started getting stronger and stronger.”
A serial entrepreneur, his father owned a restaurant called The Mughal Room, which remained very popular with the Hong Kong elite through the ‘80s and ‘90s. “I grew up in and around the restaurant. Every summer, my brother and I would go back to Hong Kong from Aitchison and work at the restaurant. This went on until I was 17. So, if I look back the seed was planted then,” Hussain explains how and when he found out he wanted to open his own restaurant one day.
“My father did okay, but I saw him struggling with his restaurants; he wasn’t doing well. This is, in some way, me picking up from where he left off, putting right his wrongs. I know, in some way it’s a continuation of the story he was trying to tell in Hong Kong in the ‘80s and ‘90s. In fact, on the New Punjab Club menu, one of the dishes is affectionately named after his restaurant. I’ve called it ‘The Mughal Room Makhani.’”
Finally having had enough of his investment banking job in New York, Hussain quit and returned to Hong Kong in 2010, with a burning desire to work in a restaurant and to pick up where his father had left off. This led to a two-year apprenticeship with a prominent restaurant group, which as compared to his finance job, he found difficult and humbling. “I was 26 at that time. It was challenging, difficult and scary, but deep down, I knew this is what I wanted to do, that this is where I belong. This is also where I met my business partner Chris, who was group chef for that group of restaurants. We talked about what we both wanted to do and I thought we had similar ideas. And rest, as they say, is history.”
Since the New Punjab Club opened its doors 18 months ago, Hussain and Chris have opened up six more eateries. Running 22 restaurants in only six years is no mean feat, but Hussain derived the motivation from his love for food, art and storytelling. “When you’re small, the goal is survival. The idea was always to bring personal stories to life. I think a lot of our restaurants are extensions of us as people, inspired by our travels, childhood memories, incidents, people, or a particular time in history. I look at these restaurants as story books; I almost have an abstract romantic view of how restaurants are created, I look at them as art pieces.”
With both father and son having experience with restaurants, one wonders why the father failed, and what the son has that the father didn’t. “We both have doggedness. You knock me down 10 times and I’ll get up 10 times. My father was a hard-worker and I learnt a lot from him, but he didn’t have mystique, magic, nostalgia and romance. That’s how I look at restaurants.”
Hussain claims to be a big foodie himself, of course, and says; even if he wasn’t running so many restaurants he’d still be travelling for food and trying out various cuisines. However, he has a hard time choosing what his favourite type of food is. “I travel a lot and eat everything. But the food at the New Punjab Club is very nostalgic. They say food memory is emotional, so that is what it is for me. It reminds me of Lahore, Aitchison, being a teen in Pakistan in the ‘90s. I’m a big eater and love eating. I always come back to Pakistani food.”
Besides running his string of restaurants and planning new ones, Hussain tries to play sports in the little time he gets in between. “I played a lot of sports since Aitchison, and music is also a big part of who I am, but this is mostly everything. I would be lying if I said I had other passions that I pursue.”
The future for his Black Sheep Restaurants looks bright, but Hussain still has no plans to come up with something in Lahore, or Pakistan. They recently opened up their first restaurant outside Hong Kong, in Shanghai, back in the summer. Their next stop is Paris. “I’m not sure about Pakistan. If we do something there, it’ll be something more ambitious than a restaurant. I have other compelling ideas for Lahore, Pakistan, in the hospitality business, something more ambitious.”
Who said the service industry was easy?
How much should you tip? Should you bring kids and their nannies to dinner?