“I could have opened Mediterranean. Japanese. Anything I already knew how to run. But my heart wasn’t going to be in it.”
Jonathan Colin, founder of El Primo, spent seven years at LPM Dubai and two at Zuma Abu Dhabi — long enough to know exactly how to open another one of those. He opened a taco place instead. Casual and self-funded, nothing like the concept he was trained for.
Six months in, El Primo is one of the hardest places to find a table in Dubai.
Jonathan tells Hashem about the two years he gave up his own living room to cook Mexican food for strangers, why he turned down investors so the idea stayed his, and what a Mexican chef recognises in Beirut.