Timur is an Afghan-American cook, lawyer, traveler, businessman, bon vivant, and general lover-of-life and merrymaker. He was born in Berkeley, California, and grew up in the East Bay. During the first 10 years of his life, he spent significant amounts of time in his parents’ restaurant, The Khyber Pass, where he was in the middle of the restaurant’s operations, its food preparation, kitchen culture, front-of-the-house management, etc.

His parents were consummate entertainers; from an early age, he was exposed to regular raucous parties, lavish dinners, and multitudes of guests from all walks of life. It was through these early experiences that Timur learned to engage with people of all ages and cultures and form the foundations of hospitality that are so intrinsic to Afghan culture and cuisine and his style of cooking, entertaining, and welcoming family and friends, like a global tribe.

Like his parents and brother, Timur went on to study at the University of California at Berkeley, where he majored in Environmental Science and Italian Studies. During his third year at university, he studied a year abroad in Venice, Italy at the University of Venice Ca’Foscari. This experience set him on his path to further culinary enrichment, as well as a deep love for some of the great European cuisines (Italian, French, Spanish). After graduating from Cal, he returned to Italy for another year and lived in Milan, which further deepened his bond with Italian and European culture and of course the continent’s storied cuisines. 

After Milan he went on to study law at Columbia University in New York City, during which period he further expanded his culinary knowledge and appreciation, exploring the city’s phenomenal culinary offering. He was in Manhattan when 9/11 occurred. The tragic event that altered world history also changed the course of his life.

After law school, he moved to Kabul, Afghanistan, from 2005 to 2010 to help support the country’s post-9/11 development efforts. He would eventually become the Managing Partner at the Flower Street Café, one of the first American-style eateries in Kabul in the post-9/11 period. It would become a go-to breakfast and lunch spot for Afghans and ex-pats alike, including the many journalists living in Kabul at the time, and expand to three locations at the peak of its operations.

It was during these years in Afghanistan that Timur’s knowledge of Afghan cuisine really evolved into something much more expansive. He revisited the many families and Khyber Pass Restaurant recipes he had been exposed to from his early years and deconstructed and prepared them regularly. At the same time, he learned many new and different regional recipes that he had previously not had exposure to.

Timur left Afghanistan in 2010 and moved cities/countries four times, from Kabul to Paris, Paris to Dubai, Dubai to New York, and finally settling in London for 8 years with his Londoner wife and their two Londoner daughters. Timur and his family moved back to California in the Spring of 2021 after living overseas for 17 years, and they settled in the East Bay hills next to Berkeley, where his life’s journey all started.

During the past 28  years, he has traveled extensively throughout Africa, the Middle East, Central, South, and Southeast Asia, and Europe. He has visited over 60 countries to date and completely filled up three large (104-page) US passports with visas from his travels. Throughout his globetrotting he always kept his mind on the culinary cultural offerings of the many countries he has visited, experiencing their many dishes, probing their flavor profiles, learning about their provenance, and discussing the same with his gracious hosts and friends around the world.