‘eat ghareeb nawaz or else’: Existential Twitter account pays homage to Indian-Pakistani restaurant where nobody goes hungry

Almost 30 years ago, Mohammed Bashir founded affordable late-night Indian-Pakistani restaurant Ghareeb Nawaz with a simple motto: Nobody goes hungry.

Generations of Chicagoans — late-night workers, college students, cab drivers and immigrants searching for a taste of home — have been able to enjoy Ghareeb Nawaz without hurting their wallets.

Decades later, Bashir’s son Mohammed Bozai, who helms all four Chicagoland locations, is retaining his father’s maxim of generous meals for a low price, expanding the restaurant to Lincoln Park in recent weeks so more Chicagoans can get the Ghareeb Nawaz experience amid record inflation pinching pockets nationwide.

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The Lincoln Park grand opening received considerable local attention on social media, thanks in no small part to a Twitter account with a simple message of its own: “eat ghareeb nawaz or else.”

Khalil Suliman was just a fan when he began the @ghareebnawazCHI Twitter account in June. He’s got plenty of fond memories of eating there — at one point on a daily basis when he was a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago — and dropping by the Devon Avenue location when he lived in Rogers Park.

Tapping into Ghareeb Nawaz’s cultish following and writing with a specific brand of millennial and Gen Z online humor, Suliman said he’s influenced by Islamic existentialist philosophy in his approach to the account’s messages and memes, as well as pure love for the paratha, curries and chili chicken biryani Ghareeb Nawaz doles out daily.

Ghareeb Nawaz serves classic Indian-Pakistani dishes, with inventive touches like using heavy cream in its butter chicken, lending a silken, lush quality to the rich sauce, Bozai said. Since taking over from his father in 2008, Bozai has added menu items like wraps and rice bowls to serve on-the-go clientele.

Mango cheesecake and butter chicken-topped fries are new dishes only available at the Lincoln Park location. But Ghareeb Nawaz’s hallmark metal trays, 99-cent breakfast specials and wall-to-wall menu are the same.

“I want to cater to everybody,” Bozai said of his Lincoln Park customers. “They’ve been so kind and nice to us over here. I don’t have the words to thank them. It’s amazing, just the outpouring of love.”

For the Oct. 17 grand opening in Lincoln Park, Suliman drummed up hype among the Twitter account’s followers, who dubbed it the “Chicago Met Gala.” Bozai said he gave away free food to anybody whocame in.

In the years after he took charge of the original Ghareeb Nawaz on Devon Avenue, Bozai oversaw the expansion to Lombard and near the University of Illinois at Chicago before opening in Lincoln Park. Bozai, who attended DePaul University, felt the neighborhood needed a halal option for its Muslim community — and the restaurant was already a proven success with UIC students farther south.

Suliman said he started the account just to see how well it would do among the restaurant’s loyal customers online. “That was kind of the whole point of creating it; I wanted to experiment using a known brand, I guess you could say,” Suliman said.

But what was once parody is now a genuine branding strategy for the chain. After a few months of tweeting, Suliman received Bozai’s full blessing to continue running the account. Now the two convene regularly to align the restaurant’s offerings with Suliman’s artistic endeavor.

Suliman said the account’s sudden growth — approaching 5,600 followers as of Friday morning — has surprised him. Save a few trolls here and there, he said the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

“Existential humor with college students: it goes together like peanut butter and jelly,” he said.

As the account’s following grows, Suliman is focused on using it to centralize the affection for Ghareeb Nawaz online, reposting fan’s dishes and praises on the page and encouraging Twitter users, solely, to “eat ghareeb nawaz.”

Ghareeb Nawaz’s namesake is a Sunni Islam saint, Mu’in al-Din Chishti, whose honorific translates to “comfort to the poor.” Prices for dishes skew lower, from $6 to $11, and Bozai strives to emulate the generosity his father espoused from the very start.

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If someone doesn’t have the money for a dish, or isn’t carrying cash (the Devon Avenue restaurant is cash only), Bozai said he tells customers not to worry, just like his dad used to do.

“I have customers that were in medical school at Loyola that come back today and say, ‘Man, we didn’t have money because we just came from India … and your dad would just give us food,’” Bozai said. “‘And now we’re doctors, and we want to come back.’”

But inflation has hit Ghareeb Nawaz like it has many other Chicago restaurants. To make ends meet, Bozai said they had to raise prices twice in the past year, and that it pains his father — who envisioned Ghareeb Nawaz as an “Indian McDonald’s” — to see prices increase.

Despite posh surroundings in Lincoln Park, Bozai said the mission and vision of Ghareeb Nawaz, cafeteria-style trays and all, will remain the same.

For Suliman, the Ghareeb Nawaz Twitter account is about making sure people know to enjoy life’s simple pleasures — like a cheap-yet-satisfying meal from Ghareeb Nawaz — amid a fast-paced and chaotic world. “Honestly, this has just been a very fun experience,” he said.

lazu@chicagotribune.com

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