If you love dining at the Michelin-starred Musaafer, thank the local newspaper.
Husband-and-wife duo Shammi and Mithu Malik opened Musaafer as the city’s first Indian fine dining restaurant in May 2020. In just four years, the Galleria establishment earned its first Michelin star, retaining the prestigious award in 2025. But before the glitz and glamour of restaurant ownership, the Maliks were just young adults navigating college life.
Mithu remembers being somewhat aware of Shammi, but her initial impression wasn’t necessarily positive. “He was the cool guy with the bike and the girls and all of that,” she says with a laugh. “Our departments were right next to each other, but he didn’t know of my existence.” Both were “not getting luck in the sense of finding the right partners,” Shammi explains, and so eventually, their parents took charge.
One group of parents placed a matrimonial ad in their local paper, and the other family responded. (Arranged marriages, Mithu notes, are common in India, but individuals also have the option to say no to the matches. Neither Shammi nor Mithu said no.) The two families met and liked each other, so they introduced Shammi to Mithu. “My dad was in love with my wife before I was,” Shammi chuckles.
The pair went on a date to a romantic restaurant in the hills, which meant a long drive. “There was an instant comfort level,” Mithu says. Shammi knew “almost instantly” that Mithu was going to be his wife, so he proposed in the middle of their first date. “Let me think about it,” Mithu said, but she later agreed, officially beginning a relationship that has lasted for years.
As newlyweds, they moved to Lagos, Nigeria, where Shammi was working, and started their first business venture together: a South African pizza franchise. The duo later expanded their business, opening multiple concepts in Lagos, including coffee shops and fish-and-chips restaurants. Eventually, the pair opened a fast-casual Indian restaurant while homesick for food from home. Their businesses grew, and thanks to mutual friends who lived in Houston, the Maliks moved to H-Town, where they opened Musaafer. A second location opened in New York City last summer.
Over the years, with growing success, so much has changed, but the Maliks feel they haven’t changed at all. “I think we’re still the same. We enjoy the same things. We still have the same values. We still respect each other for the same principles that we hold dear to us,” Mithu says. “I keep telling her every time, whenever I get a chance, that I have fallen more in love,” Shammi says. Beyond love, there’s an “immense amount” of respect, he adds. —Erica Cheng