Ma’am Saab owner Raheel Gauba had a lot on his plate in running Charleston’s award-winning downtown Pakistani restaurant. Now, he’s crafting plates, too.
“For years, I led everything at Ma’am Saab but the kitchen — the vision, the hospitality, the room,” said Gauba, a former technologist who entered the culinary business world shortly before the pandemic. “Now the kitchen is mine too, and I’m loving every second of it.”
To celebrate his additional role, he’s added new dishes that he says are deeply personal.
“This menu is my life on a plate — the places I’ve been, the people I’ve missed, the flavors I could never let go of,” he said this week. “It’s also a thank you to the chefs who carried the torch before me and helped us get here. I never imagined I’d end up in this seat — and now I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
New dishes include tastes that are broadening Charleston’s palate:
- Lucknow Nihari, a 16-hour slow-cooked lamb shank made in limited numbers each night;
- Super Highway Karahi, drawn from the dhabas off Karachi’s Super Highway that Gauba once visited with his late uncle;
- Karachi-style biryani, which he ate as a child in Pakistan;
- Fritos Chaat, a riff on a taco with Pakistani ingredients;
- Sweet Potato Chaat, a reinvented dish that’s built on local Lowcountry sweet potatoes.
Also on the menu only in the restaurant’s three-course tasting experience are a new watermelon masala chaat, gunpowder okra fries and a raj kachori, which is a puffed pastry shell filled with potatoes and other ingredients blended with chutneys and tangy spices.
Gauba also pointed to nightly themes, such as Local Love Night on Sundays where a local first-time visitor will get an off-menu Pakistani street snack for free, and Wednesday’s date night, where couples can enjoy a multi-course tasting with bubbly wine and dessert.
“Hospitality isn’t just what’s on the plate — it’s who you get to share the table with,” he said. “The best tables are loud, a little messy and full of people who like each other, and we built these nights around that.
“This city has given me so much over the years, and these nights are my way of giving some of it back.”
Ma’am Saab is a three-time winner of Best Indian/Pakistani restaurant in the City Paper’s Best of Charleston readers’ award. Gauba said, however, Indian and Pakistani food aren’t the same, but are similar. The borders of Pakistan, in fact, didn’t exist before 1947, but people across the Indian subcontinent have shared flavors and regional versions of dishes for centuries.
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