(Editor’s note: This is the 60th installment in a monthly series speaking with minority business owners and leaders. Each will be asked their views on minority-business conditions in the state and for ways to improve those businesses’ chances for success. See previous features here.)
When Subat Dilmurat and his wife, Nadia Paerhati, opened Providence’s Jahunger LLC restaurant in 2017, few outside of the local Asian community were familiar with Uyghur cuisine.
Eight years later, Uyghur restaurants remain rare in New England, but Dilmurat, who grew up in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China, was confident that the cuisine would reach a broad audience.
“We believe that open-minded people like to try different things, that once they have this type of food, it will mean something to them and they’ll come back for more,” Dilmurat said. “That’s what we believed in at the beginning, and that’s what happened.”
The business got off to a strong start. Despite a limited social media presence and lack of formal advertising, “everything was sold out the first day because I could only prepare that much [food],” Dilmurat said.
He soon hired another chef to help keep up with demand, while Paerhati, who had previous restaurant experience, oversaw the eatery’s front-of-house and financial operations.
Since that time, Jahunger has fostered a loyal and growing customer base on the East Side of Providence, opened a second location in Cambridge, Mass., and twice earned recognition from the James Beard Foundation.
But before reaching the latter two milestones, the business experienced a major setback in 2018, when an attic fire forced the restaurant to shut down for more than two years.
This obstacle helped Dilmurat realize he had cultivated something special in Providence.
For the first time, it occurred to him that the restaurant had “a cult-like following,” Dilmurat said. “People [are] kind of knocking on your door and saying, ‘When are you going to be reopening?’ That kind of moved me to think that maybe I will do this for the rest of my life.”
The Providence restaurant reopened in February 2021, with some restrictions and anxieties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic lingering. But the business came back strong and continued to grow. Jahunger opened its Cambridge restaurant last fall, and the company now employs about 50 people between the two locations.
In 2024 and 2025, Dilmurat was named a semifinalist in the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef: Northeast competition.
Dilmurat didn’t set out to become a chef, though he wasn’t a stranger to the industry. Growing up in Ürümqi, the second-largest city in Xinjiang, his parents ran a successful restaurant.
Still, Dilmurat doesn’t think of himself as having much of a background in restaurants, as he had never worked in the kitchen or served customers at the family business. But Dilmurat had absorbed skills that would become cornerstones of owning his own restaurant: a taste for top-quality Uyghur cuisine, a strong work ethic and exceptional customer service.
“Growing up eating the best Uyghur food, I think that’s the only thing I learned from my parents” when it came to restaurants, Dilmurat said. “And of course, the way they looked at the business, their perseverance, their hardworking attitude. I was watching how things were operated and how they managed finances, how they trained employees, how they talked to people.”
When he found himself at a career crossroads, Dilmurat’s parents suggested he give restaurant ownership a try. Dilmurat had moved from Xinjiang to Rhode Island to study hotel management at Johnson & Wales University in 2009. He knew he didn’t want a 9-to-5 job. He had also found gaps in the food scene.
“I feel like there is a need, and there is a lack of our food on the market,” Dilmurat said. “Wherever I went that said [it was an] authentic Asian or authentic Uyghur restaurant, when I had their food, I didn’t feel like I had 10% of what they have back home.”
Having witnessed the amount of work his parents put into running their restaurant, opening his own business was a daunting task.
But “my personality is like, if I invest in something, even if I fail multiple times, I still come out better,” Dilmurat said. “It’s a very bad feeling – it’s like failing if you walk away.”
Dilmurat describes Uyghur cuisine as “a mixture of Asian and Arabic food,” with historic Silk Road trade routes bringing a wide range of spices and ingredients to Xinjiang.
He intends to continue broadening the availability of Uyghur food, with plans to expand the business on a franchise model.
1. Do you believe racism is keeping minorities from starting businesses in the Ocean State or succeeding when they do? I may [have] believed in racism in the past, but I found that, in the end, people with perseverance and resilience will overcome being rejected and looked down upon. I think we are all new to this country and the system. You learn and improve. The business world is much tougher than that, so I don’t think racism is keeping anyone from getting an education or improving.
2. How dependent is your business on the support of other minority groups? Is that a sustainable business model? We started the business with mainly Chinese customers because of the familiarity they share with our cooking, but we have very balanced audiences now.
3. What one thing could Rhode Island do to boost the odds for minority-owned business success? Funding is a big part of growing a business, with high labor costs and lease inflation. These are the three areas all business owners struggle with. If there is absolutely one thing, it would be funding.
4. Have you had to turn somewhere other than a bank for a loan? Do you believe the state’s lending institutions generally treat minorities fairly? I don’t think they make their decisions based on the ethnicity of the business owner. It should be the type of business and its finances. Ethnic group owners must reach out and network to gain this access sometimes.
5. If another minority entrepreneur asked you where they could turn to for support for their business, where would you direct them? I would recommend them to check out Context&Consulting [a business consulting and marketing service based in Rhode Island].
