2025 –
Peruvian chicken and rice, built around a green sauce I spent months failing to recreate. My brother runs it now.
What I say about it now, and what I was actually posting at the time.
There was a Peruvian place near the office in my Goldman days that I couldn't stop thinking about, years after I'd left. PSK exists because of a green sauce it took me sixteen goes to get right.
There's this lunch from my Goldman days I can't get out of my head. After 16 failed attempts, I finally nailed the green sauce that had senior bankers queuing in Savile Row suits. Here's why I spent 2 months obsessing over chicken: There was this Peruvian place near our…
Simply Smashed meant walking into a market with smashed burgers on every corner and trying to rise above them. PSK was the opposite, because most people here had never tried anything like it.
I'm building @PSK_UKI because I want to bring some new flavours to the halal food scene with simply smashed it was about entering a saturated market (smashed burgers everywhere) and trying to rise above with peruvian street kitchen it's about introducing something new & fresh!
Proud to announce our newest food brand @PSK_UKI I’m building the most addictive chicken and rice box in the city. Slow-cooked Peruvian grilled chicken with our super addictive green sauce. Think Shah’s Halal but Peruvian. Peruvian Street Kitchen launches October 2025.
Our first box was leftover chicken and rice. The one we launched with took two months of obsessing.
Left photo: Our first PSK box. Leftover chicken and rice. Right photo: What 2 months of obsession creates. Most founders would hide that first photo. But here's what tech taught me that most restaurants don't understand: You can't iterate on an idea. You can only iterate on something that exists. Version 1 was literally leftovers from my fridge. Air fryer chicken. Yesterday's rice. Some of our Peruvian Thigh green sauce drizzled on top. It wasn't good. But it existed. And once something exists, you can make it better. Tested 8 different rices at home. Built 3 sauces that work like a team. Tweaked the char, the steam, the ratios. Ate it every single day for 2 months straight. This is why our second kitchen has stickers we slapped up ourselves instead of fancy banners. Why we're testing in plastic containers before designing packaging. Because perfection is a direction, not a starting point. Most restaurants spend months planning the perfect menu. We shipped ugly and improved daily. Two months later, I'm still not bored of eating this. That's when you know you've built something dangerous. PSK - Peruvian Street Kitchen. Launching this week. From leftover chicken to London's next obsession. Magic doesn't appear. It evolves.
First look of Peruvian Street Kitchen!
We ran a stealth test before opening properly. Someone spent £100 trying to sabotage it, which I found hilarious, and a dad tried to buy from us five times in one week and we were shut every time.
Someone spent £100 trying to sabotage my stealth launch. And honestly? It's hilarious. So we're quietly testing PSK (Peruvian Street Kitchen). Not advertising. Just fulfilling random orders. Day 1: This guy orders from Simply Smashed. We go all out - extra portions, made with love, the works. Check the app that night: 1 star. Day 2: SAME GUY orders from PSK. Wait. We're in stealth mode. How did he even find both brands? Whatever. We try even harder. Make it perfect. That night: Another 1 star. Then the smoking gun: Someone left a 1-star Google review. On our brand new listing. Two hours after I created it. We hadn't even taken a single order yet. That's when I knew. This wasn't about the food. After that, this guy starts trying to order from BOTH brands. Every. Single. Day. Since leaving those 1-star reviews, he's attempted nearly £100 worth of orders. We just keep rejecting them. The Uber Eats account manager was like "yeah you can just ban him" so casually. Like this happens all the time. Because it does. The food business is weirdly tribal. There's literally takeaway wars happening up north right now. Actual wars. Over chicken shops. When I first started Simply Smashed, this stuff destroyed me. I'd see a fake review and spiral. Question everything. Lose sleep wondering what I did wrong. Check the reviews obsessively. Let it consume my whole day. My confidence would shatter. I'd second-guess every decision. Now? I recognise the pattern immediately. Competitor sees you doing well. Competitor panics. Competitor attacks. It's actually validation. Someone is SO pressed about our quiet little test that they're burning their own money AND time stalking our Google listings. The shift happened when I realised: You can't control the tribal nonsense. You can only control the food you make and how you treat real customers. Their panic is just noise. Your focus is the signal. These days when I see this behaviour, I don't spiral. I smile. Because if someone's willing to spend £100 trying to stop you... You must be doing something right. Anyway, we're thinking of adding him to our loyalty programme. At this rate, he'll get a free meal by Tuesday.
A dad tried to buy chicken and rice from me 5 times in one week. We were closed every single time. His son had spotted PSK on my Twitter. Said it was "better than Shah's and Pepe's." In their house, that's high praise. See, this father and son talk about everything. Football. Work. Life. But especially food. It's their language. So when the son mentioned this new spot just around the corner from their house, the dad made a mental note. Monday: Walked over. Closed. Tuesday: Tried again. Closed. Wednesday: Third attempt. Still closed. Thursday: Fourth time. Nothing. Each time he went home empty-handed. Each time he could've given up. Any other dad orders Deliveroo. Moves on. Not this one. Friday, attempt number five. He sees our gate open. Walks up to the building - door open. Reaches our kitchen door. Lights on inside. "Are you actually open? Can I buy food?" We'd been operating limited hours. Testing. Perfecting. Missing customers like him all week. Here's where it gets worse: we'd just sold our last portion. Fresh batch would take 30 minutes. I told him straight. Expected him to leave. "I'll wait. I'm not going home empty-handed." So he waited. In our little kitchen. Watching us prep. 30 minutes later, he left with two boxes. One for his son. One for himself. That night, a father and son connected over chicken and rice. Here's the thing: No one should have to try 5 times to taste what we're building. That's why on November 2nd, PSK is doing a one-day pop-up at Simply Smashed Stepney. One day. Full menu. Three sauces. The chicken and rice that's about to change London's lunch game. No more closed doors. No more missed connections. No more "we just ran out." Just the most addictive chicken and rice box you've ever had. November 2nd. Simply Smashed Stepney. Come see what that father waited for. Come taste what London's been missing.
Running burgers and rice boxes out of one kitchen is absolute chaos. I found that out the hard way.
Running burgers and rice boxes from the same kitchen is absolute chaos. Found that out the hard way yesterday. PSK's first pop-up. Simply Smashed still firing orders. Two brands, one kitchen, complete madness at 2pm. We opened an hour late. People waited. Nobody left. Once we found our flow though? Different story. Orders flying out. Both brands running smooth. The team locked in. Then we sold out an hour early. Despite overstocking by 40%. I've been personally messaging everyone who came. The responses are keeping me up: "Never going Shah's again" "1000/10 - just regret not ordering more" "Let me know if we can invest" That last one got me. Two weeks ago PSK was just an idea. Yesterday someone wanted to invest. My mum's still handmaking our sauces. Every batch. Won't let anyone else touch them yet. That's how we build brands. With our own hands first. Learning every detail. Every process. Every standard. Running multiple brands from one kitchen isn't new for us. But when both are firing at full speed? That's when you really feel it. The pressure. The energy. The buzz when it all clicks. This week, we announce PSK's first permanent location. The chaos was worth it though. Every single second. Because those messages? That's what makes all the behind-the-scenes work worth it. London - thank you for waiting that extra hour. Thank you for believing in what we're building.
Last October I fell asleep at the wheel in traffic and drove into the back of the car in front of me. Nobody was hurt. It took me a long time to stop thinking about the version where somebody was. I was setting up Peruvian Street Kitchen at the time, still running the dark kitchen for Simply Smashed, and taking Draper meetings on top of both. Which meant the only window Mustafa and I could find each other in was six, seven in the morning, before service. So I'd take those, work the kitchen through the day, and then pick the rest back up late into the night. Every day, because there was no other way to fit it. I was a bit proud of the hours at the time. That was the tell. Because the thing I'd built only worked as long as I personally never stopped. That isn't a company, that's just me being a bottleneck with a logo on it. And you don't fix a bottleneck by grinding harder, which was the only move I actually knew. So we hired. And we cut the week in half: every client call stacked into Monday and Wednesday, the other three days left completely alone for building. It sounds like nothing. It's the reason there are now whole days where I'm not the thing everyone is waiting on. It's still early and it's still intense. But Draper doesn't run on how much sleep I got anymore. P.S the guy I went into was called Adam. We swapped details there in the traffic and he couldn't have been nicer about it.
New PSK website up now: with a new location tease...
I was building an AI company between burger orders and honestly I miss it. I keep looking at this photo and it's kinda crazy. Simply Smashed was on its second location. Peruvian Street Kitchen was on its first. And somewhere in between both of those I decided this was also where I'd start building an AI content company on Replit. I had my laptop wedged into whatever corner I could find, squinting at code I barely understood while delivery drivers walked in and out. I'd be mid-prompt and someone would shout that orders were backing up so I'd get stuck in packing rice boxes and saucing them up. Then come back to my laptop trying to remember what I was even building. If the rush got too much the laptop just got closed and that was that. I'd been training writers at a ghostwriting agency and I could see so clearly that the whole industry was about to flip. Like I could literally feel it. And I had this thing in my head going if I don't start building this right now, from this kitchen, on this dying laptop, someone else is going to do it and I'll be watching from behind a fryer. It wasn't a plan btw. I didn't sit down and map anything out. Two food brands running, a kitchen that's too small for any of this, and my brain just going "yeah but what if we also built a tech company from here." I physically couldn't not do it. That was a couple of months ago. Draper is now past ramen profitable and growing every month. Peruvian Street Kitchen is opening its second physical location soon iA. Everything is better now. Better setup, better tools, actual laptops that work. But I keep coming back to this photo because something about building from that kitchen felt different and I can't fully explain why. P.S: I'm a firm believer that being in the trenches means delaying your trim, you have to earn it as a reward.
Peruvian Street Kitchen Stepney has launched on UberEats Our second @PSK_UKI branch now live! People are loving it already الحمد لله
I've left Simply Smashed. After 2 years of building the highest rated burger joint in London, I'm stepping back. My brother's taking over day-to-day. I'm building something new. It's strange to write that. This was never supposed to be my thing. My dad has been in the food industry for over 35 years. Started in a tiny French seaside town called Dieppe where it felt like we were the only asian family around, been doing this since before I was born. The restaurant was always his world. Then my parents got on a flight to Bangladesh and lockdown got announced mid-air. Me and my brother suddenly had a restaurant with no customers, staff who needed paying, and rent that didn't care about pandemics. We ran the Help Our Heroes campaign, delivered thousands of pizza slices to hospitals across London, kept the lights on for months. When we started thinking about selling, a buyer came in and made my dad feel like a fool. Said we were "bleeding out." Made a lowball offer so insulting my dad slammed the table and walked out. They just smirked and lit cigarettes outside. That led to a chain of events which led up to starting Simply Smashed. We launched three concepts at once. Simply Smashed just happened to be the one that took off. A £100 grill. Tables pushed away. The front space rented to a flower shop so people walked through flowers to pick up their burgers. We had no money to do it properly so we just told people what we were building and let them watch us figure it out. Today we're rated 4.9 stars. The highest rated burger joint in London. Looking back now it's hard to separate Simply Smashed from my family. My dad showing up every single time we needed him. My brother building operations that actually worked. My sister-in-law who created half the recipes we still serve today. We got review bombed for stocking Salaam Cola and the community showed up for us. Grateful for all of it. This was always a family thing. It still is. My brother has been with us from early and I trust him completely to take Simply Smashed and Peruvian Street Kitchen forward. I'm not disappearing - I'll still be around for strategic oversight. But the day-to-day is his now. Excited to see where he takes them both. I'm building something new. Can't say much yet but if you followed the Simply Smashed journey, you know the playbook. More soon iA.
1 in 3 people that try peruvian street kitchen are reordering, going to come out of stealth v soon but results are very promising 👀