However, the catering business didn’t last long without a standing space to cook from. He would rent out a commissary kitchen and have the chefs from Devi come in and cook, piecing together the orders as they came. When he graduated from culinary school in 2014, he continued running catering operations for Devi, despite the fact that they had to close the physical location in 2015. He realized that his lack of cooking knowledge made him dependent on the chef for the business to function, which wasn’t something he felt comfortable with, s o he enrolled in the Institute of Culinary Education. Since Rohan had only had front of house training in the past, he wasn’t able to communicate on the same level with the chef and make him understand what was needed and why. The chef had his own way of doing things and didn’t want to get onboard with these new ideas. However, as Rohan came up with new dishes that tied Indian flavors into other cuisines and curated menus to reach a wider variety of customers, he started getting pushback from his chef. It was there that he saw a need for a caterer with unique offerings rather than your typical Indian food and expanded the business into catering. He was placed at Devi, a standalone location that wasn’t part of the restaurant chain, and began running it’s operations. and started working full-time for his father. Rohan studied hospitality management in college and after spending a year in India learning Indian cooking techniques and helping to operate his family’s restaurant there, he returned to the U.S. Their focus on building a culture where everyone is treated like family has turned Queens Bully into a neighborhood hotspot where different people of different ages and different ethnicities all feel at home. In 2016, Rohan and his friend, Suraj Patel, took over the space and created Queens Bully, a multi-faceted barbecue restaurant that was designed specifically for the neighborhood to love and enjoy. It was this passion that lead him to ask his father if he could take over the lease for one of his restaurant locations on Queens Boulevard that had closed down two years beforehand. I t’s a business that he’s always known and had a passion for and despite the difficulties, he loves it. Although he admits that there were periods of time where he disliked the work, he says that he was drawn towards a career in the restaurant industry because “it runs in my blood”.
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He started out cleaning dishes and busing tables, then doing deliveries and, as he got older, worked his way up to serving and bartending. Growing up Rohan’s father owned a chain of Indian restaurants, so from the time he was five or six years old, his weekends and summers were spent working there. A first generation Indian American, Rohan was born and raised in Queens, New York and was immersed in the food industry from a very young age. This is Rohan Aggarwal, the co-owner of Queens Bully.