{"id":307971,"date":"2026-03-01T12:48:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T12:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/307971\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T12:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T12:48:15","slug":"middle-east-conflict-auckland-restaurateurs-sid-and-chand-sahrawat-stuck-in-dubai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/307971\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle East conflict: Auckland restaurateurs Sid and Chand Sahrawat stuck in Dubai"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI did not expect Iran to be impacting Dubai. In fact, when the other Gulf countries started shutting down their airports, I thought, \u2018Surely Dubai won\u2019t shut the airport\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Within hours, that assumption unravelled. What began as reports of partial closures quickly escalated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen within a couple of hours, it was like partial closure, and then full closure,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is when we started seeing images of the interceptors [drones].<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we heard a couple of booms.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RenownedRenowned restaurateurs Sid and Chand Sahrawat.<\/p>\n

Following a drone strike that caused a fire at another hotel, the Fairmont Palm Hotel in Dubai, which left four injured, Sahrawat and her husband made plans to stay with a friend until things calm down.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in Business Bay, which is the centre of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the ongoing drone strikes, Sahrawat said Dubai was still a safe space and \u201cfeels quite protected\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worry is how long people are stuck for.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re supposed to leave the day after.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only difficulty since, Sahrawat said, has been explaining to their children why Dubai is being affected by the Iranian-US conflict \u2013 telling them it is due to military bases and strategic interests in the region.<\/p>\n

The Sahrawats own acclaimed Indian restaurant Cassia, which this week announced it will close its doors at Auckland\u2019s SkyCity dining precinct in June<\/a>, before moving to a new central Auckland location.<\/p>\n

\"SidSid and Chand Sahrawat in front of Cassia at SkyCity. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n

Sid Sahrawat has won several accolades and awards for his cooking.<\/p>\n

After moving to New Zealand in 2000, he and his wife now co-own three top restaurants \u2013 Anise, The French Cafe and Cassia.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Sahrawat was named New Zealand\u2019s Best Chef at the Metro Peugeot Restaurant of the Year Awards. Cassia has been a regular in Viva\u2019s Top 50 Auckland Restaurant Awards.<\/p>\n

The Sahrawats sold their Ponsonby restaurant Kol in April last year, citing challenging trading conditions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. Before he joined the Hamilton-based team, he worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive. He previously worked as a journalist at Black Press Media in Canada and won a fellowship with the Vancouver Sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI did not expect Iran to be impacting Dubai. In fact, when the other Gulf countries started shutting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3471,95,51,168162,6150,13982,8414,4225,3806,6562,62035,12515,78,16609,10110,111,43,139,69,91396,93601,168163,168161,19063,29460,2742,24358,102],"class_list":{"0":"post-307971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-among","9":"tag-and","10":"tag-auckland","11":"tag-chand","12":"tag-conflict","13":"tag-continues","14":"tag-couple","15":"tag-dubai","16":"tag-east","17":"tag-flights","18":"tag-grounded","19":"tag-highprofile","20":"tag-in","21":"tag-iran","22":"tag-middle","23":"tag-new-zealand","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-newzealand","26":"tag-nz","27":"tag-restaurateurs","28":"tag-retaliatory","29":"tag-sahrawat","30":"tag-sid","31":"tag-strikes","32":"tag-stuck","33":"tag-thousands","34":"tag-wave","35":"tag-with"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}