Our Story
Dolan's brings authentic Uyghur cuisine to California — flavors carried for centuries through the oasis towns of Central Asia, where the Turkic, Persian, and Chinese worlds meet at the table.
Everything we serve is 100% halal - the whole menu, the whole kitchen. No pork, no alcohol. Our chefs hand-pull Laghman noodles fresh daily, bake samsa in tandoor-style ovens, and slow-cook polo with the same care passed down through Uyghur generations.
Dolan's opened in Alhambra in 2019, and in Irvine after that. The San Gabriel Valley
has one of the densest restaurant scenes in the country, and Uyghur cooking was on
nobody's list. KCRW's Good Food described Dolan's as
one of only a handful of Uyghur restaurants in the United States
— still true today, and the reason the dining room holds people who drove an hour to
find it next to people who had never heard the word before that evening.
The name comes from a place and a kind of music rather than from a family surname. That story is here.
The Los Angeles Times has included Dolan's in its 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles in back-to-back editions — 2024-2025 and 2025-2026. PBS SoCal filmed an episode of The Migrant Kitchen in our kitchen. In December 2025, CBS Mornings brought The Dish to the restaurant and put Uyghur food on national television.
Every article, broadcast and listing — with a link to the original in each case — is on our press page.
Everything we serve is 100% halal - the whole menu, the whole kitchen. No pork, no alcohol. That is not a section of the menu; it is the constraint the whole kitchen is built around — what that means in practice is here.
Noodles are pulled by hand each day rather than cut or bought in. Samsa and goshnaan bake in a tandoor-style oven rather than a convection rack. Polo cooks slowly enough for the carrot to give up its sugar into the rice, which is where the color comes from. None of that is quicker than the alternative. It is what makes the food taste like it comes from where it comes from.
If you are working out what to order, start with what Uyghur food is, or go straight to the menu with prices.
Alhambra came first, in the San Gabriel Valley. Irvine followed, in Orange County, near Walnut Village Center. Both are open every day from 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM, both have free parking, and both serve the same menu at the same prices.
Whether everything is halal (it is — every dish, every kitchen), how reservations work for big tables, where to park at each store, or which delivery apps carry us — the answers live on our FAQ page. For the food itself, the full menu with prices is the fastest way to start planning dinner.
