Dubai: Chef Pradeep Khullar was 15 when his father passed away from cancer. This was 1998. His parents had spent their savings on treatment, travelling across northern India in search of medical help.
“We were doing very well, but unfortunately, I lost my dad when I was in grade 10 because of cancer.” To make ends meet, his mother found a job while also running a small tailoring boutique in Rohini, Delhi, where the family lived. She managed the orders, measurements, customers and deliveries herself.
“She used to wake up at five, do the chores, send us to school, go to work at her day job. At six, she would go to the tailoring boutique, fill in the orders and the measurements, and then speak to the customers.”
By 10pm, she would return home and cook. The family went to bed around midnight.
“Those six, seven years were really hard on us,” he remembers.
By Grade 12, he realised that many of his classmates had been preparing for engineering and medical entrance examinations with special tutoring. He had not, so the entrance exam results weren’t optimal. He secured admission to one university, but the seat required a payment of Rs400,000. “I didn't have that much money.”
One Sunday morning, while playing cricket with friends, he mentioned his predicament. A friend happened to have an application form for a hotel management course, which he offered to Khullar. He had bought it for his sister, who no longer wanted it.
Khullar completed the application, passed the interview and group discussion, and secured a place in Delhi.
“It was not going to cost us a lot. It's just the tuition fee because I lived in the same city, and would use the local transport. It led me to do hotel management.”
Today, 28 years after his father's passing, Khullar is a Michelin-recognised chef running Bhaturewala, a specialty restaurant he recently opened in Dubai, selling chole bhature (spiced chickpea curry served with deep-fried bread), the North Indian street-food favourite he once bought for his family on Sundays from a neighbourhood vendor in Delhi.
The Dubai restaurant is his own venture, inspired by those childhood memories.
The business has been funded from his savings and that of his partner Saubhagi Veer. Its small kitchen can produce only 200 plates. He cooks in batches of 50. There are hour-long queues in this quiet back alley of Oud Metha in Dubai but he refuses to sell food he considers even a fraction below par, even though customers are waiting.
The boy in the queue
Eating out was reserved for birthdays and anniversaries. On Sundays, the family would buy chole bhature from a neighbourhood vendor in Delhi.
“Being the young boy of the family, it was always my turn and duty to stand in the queue, whether it's summer or winter. I was supposed to bring back five, six plates for all of them. So, Bhaturewala in Dubai is nostalgia on steroids for me.”
In 2004, he found work as a kitchen management trainee with Old World Hospitality in Delhi. The work involved lifting enormous cooking vessels, preparing vast quantities of food and spending up to 18 hours on a shift.
His cousins had changed careers when things did not work out. Khullar could not afford to.
“They all had Plan B. Hence they did not stick to what they chose. I had no Plan B, and I kept marching ahead because there was no choice.”
He worked on the opening of Indian Accent in Delhi and rose through the ranks at Old World Hospitality. His responsibilities expanded to quick-service restaurants, casual dining operations and a central kitchen supplying 13 larger kitchens.
He subsequently joined Lite Bite Foods, handling Punjab Grill as Brand Chef across India.
By 2015, he was married, had a young daughter and was carrying a housing loan. An offer arrived from Jodhpur, an Indian restaurant in Dubai.
“I calculated that in two years, if I work hard and I sustain myself, I'll be able to pay off the loan.”
He left his wife and daughter behind in India and travelled to Dubai from Delhi. He intended to stay for two years.
The road to Michelin
Saubhagi Veer arrived in Dubai in 2015 to work for Zomato. Two months later, she lost her job because of structural changes. She found work with a public relations agency that represented Jodhpur and worked with Khullar to build the brand.
Veer subsequently joined Mint Leaf of London and persuaded its management to hire Khullar. He became chef-patron. She rose to chief executive. They owned equity. During the pandemic, they sometimes delivered orders in their own cars.
She eventually resigned in December 2025. Khullar left in January 2026.
They were invited as consultants to Nazaara, located a floor above Mint Leaf in the Emirates Financial Towers, DIFC.
Khullar's menu included dahi golgappe, truffle malai tikka, lamb chops and dishes drawing on his childhood favourites.
“I mean, you only cook the way you like to eat.”
Within a few months, an invitation from Michelin arrived at the restaurant. Veer initially thought someone might be playing a joke but both attended the ceremony on October 6.
“Chef Khullar kept saying, they're just calling us to clap for other people,” she recalls. “Didn't tell anyone in the kitchen. It was just him and me, who decided that we're going to keep this between us because we don't want to get anybody's hopes up.”
At the ceremony, Nazaara was announced among Michelin Guide’s new selections.
“It definitely puts a target on your back but it also gives you that credibility. People take it very seriously. They hold it in good regard. But again, if you have a Michelin plaque on the door it also means that you're being judged by every diner who's walking in. It’s good to have, it puts a lot of pressure but you take pride in it. Nobody can take this away from us now,” Khullar says to Emirates 24/7.
The two left Nazaara a few days later. By then, they were preparing for the launch of Bhaturewala. Walking away after Michelin recognition required a lot of courage.
“If we didn't know the city, we would definitely not have done that. But Dubai feels home to me, home to her,” Khullar says of their decision.
The pink and turquoise shop
Bhaturewala was originally intended as a weekend business. They would work at Nazaara during the week and spend the weekend making chole bhature.
They found a small store in Oud Metha and began converting it into a specialty restaurant. The place had previously housed unsuccessful businesses. Veer remembers being told that nobody would come.
“Don't expect anybody to show up.”
The investment came from their savings. “Everything's bootstrapped,” Veer says.
Khullar wanted to serve the chole bhature he remembered from Delhi, at a price ordinary customers could afford: AED 20.
The menu is limited to chole bhature, mutton curry with bhature and a small selection of lassis. There is no dining area. Customers can either order takeaway or eat in their cars.
Bhaturewala opened in Oud Metha on October 16, 2026. It operates on Friday evenings from 6 to 8pm, and on Saturday and Sunday mornings from 9 to 11am and evenings from 6 to 8pm.
Veer had never previously worked at a food counter or operated its point-of-sale system. Khullar is back in a small kitchen, preparing food himself.
Within two weekends, their sales have exceeded their initial projections, although she says they are not yet making a profit.
The man at the window
One evening at Bhaturewala, a man waited for more than an hour for his order. Khullar was working near the service window when the customer called him over.
“I thought he's going to hit me.”
Instead, the man pulled him towards the window and hugged him.
Khullar asked him, “Aren't you upset?”
“For what?”
“You waited for more than one hour.”
“No, this is pure love, man. Don't drop the quality. Continue with this.”
He was astonished and told him, “If you guys keep showing up, we'll continue.”
Some customers have returned for every service. Others have waited too long, struggled to park or arrived after the food had sold out.
Some accused the pair of deliberately restricting production to create demand.
Veer asks, “Why would I not want to take your money?”
She reads the reviews and responds to complaints. Some have led to changes in operating hours and service procedures.
Khullar arrives as early as 4am to prepare lassis. Veer comes in later to work on pickles, accompaniments, labels and service preparations.
“We're sleeping only two hours every weekend,” Khullar says. “At 5.30pm there’s so much anxiety building up, I feel like we're going in the evening for an exam,” Veer adds.
During one service, mutton curry remained in the kitchen while customers were still waiting outside. Khullar refused to sell it.
The meat had cooked for too long and was beginning to break apart.
“Please tell them it is sold out,” he told Veer.
She protested. They had customers waiting, and the curry was still there.
Khullar would not serve it.
“This is the only asset we have. We have no seating, we have no dine-in option, we can't compromise the quality,” he says.
He wants the last plate to be as good as the first. The focus on consistency, quality and service that shaped his fine-dining career now guides his cooking at Bhaturewala.
A Dubai-it journey
“I am most grateful for Dubai. It's the launchpad of my career. It is home for all of us, my family, my daughter, and she's 13 now. She's lived here for 10 years, and she prides herself on being a Dubai kid. She refuses to go back to India or any part of the world. This is home.
“Opening Bhaturewala, this is exactly the Dubai-it moment for us. I wouldn't have the courage to do this in India,” Khullar says.
Veer recalls an Emirati approaching the Bhaturewala counter after everything had sold out. “What are you selling?” he asked. He had seen the queues but had no idea what people were buying.
She explained the two dishes, and he said he would return another weekend. “It's Dubai. That's Dubai! People come through for you.”
Khullar has been equally surprised by the support of other restaurateurs, the sense of community in Dubai, which he says would rarely happen elsewhere.
“My competitors are sending us flowers, boxes of sweets,” he adds with a surprised smile.
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Anupa Kurian is a Dubai-based senior editor and writer with nearly 28 years in journalism. She has been a food editor. Anupa writes across gastronomy, culture, health, environment and the people who make a city what it is, drawn to stories that reveal themselves in the details.