Nice piece.
Though in all my years of eating at Haandi, I can’t recall seeing that guy behind the counter or in the kitchen 
The same lady and another guy were always in front (and they recognized people of course).
A few years ago the food went downhill, and when I asked, the guy in front said there were some issues with the owners and staff, maybe they had fired a bunch of people — the cook included? Over time, it returned to a baseline, though quite not as good as before.
It’s one of the only remaining Pakistani cabbie joints around there — the others got bought over by the Bangladeshi influx (eg Lahori kabab — not really Lahori anymore).
(There’s another bunch of similar cabbie joints on the westside, but they’re not patronized much by non-south asians.)
