Mohammad Nadeem, a 2007 university graduate, has found success in post-college life after buying a Pakistani restaurant in Germantown.

Behind foil trays of simmering lentils and curries, Mohammad Nadeem spends 14 hours a day cultivating a Pakistani kitchen. His restaurant has become the second home he never found on this campus and his loyal customer base is that second family.

Although Nadeem, a 2007 alumnus, was too busy as a commuting undergraduate to join a single club or go out with friends, he decided to take a risk and buy a restaurant, Eastern Kabob and Sweets in Germantown, in his final semester. While he still sometimes dreams of a cushy 9-to-5 job, Nadeem said he has grown close to his staff and customers and recent glowing reviews continue to boost his business.

Eastern Kabob and Sweets, located in a Germantown shopping strip, draws many regular customers, some frequenting several times a week. A March 4 review in The Washington Post Magazine praised many of the authentic Pakistani dishes, including the creamy yellow lentil daal, a traditional goat and rice specialty and freshly ground kabobs “propelled to greatness with jalapeño, paprika and flavorful thigh meat.”

“I want to serve people what I could eat,” said Nadeem, glancing around his restaurant at the familiar faces – the couple at the table near the restaurant’s entrance is from Hagerstown, he says, and the man seated under the TV, set to NASCAR, orders tea every day.

“I would never do frozen food at all, never,” he added. “We’ve got to serve everything fresh.”

But Nadeem wasn’t always working toward a restaurateur career – he originally envisioned himself crunching numbers.

Throughout his college years, Nadeem had been juggling finance classes, daily commutes from Rockville and a full-time job at the Gaithersburg Marriott Hotel when he began to realize the economic downturn had thinned the market for finance majors. He convinced one of his closest family friends and a professional chef, Mohammad Hanif, to help take over a tiny 15-seat restaurant that had fallen into disrepair.

He did not seek professional advice from his business professors, wary of their skepticism.

“I was scared of failure,” he said. “I thought they were going to say, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ But I was very hungry and motivated and I wanted to do something with my life.”

Instead, Nadeem said he followed a “gut feeling,” and he and Hanif spent months cleaning away layers of dirt before they opened in 2007 and slowly gained a following of take-out customers.

And while he said he cannot imagine working 14-hour days at the restaurant his whole life, he recently moved to a larger space and muses about opening another location in College Park or Rockville.

Or he could sell his restaurant and return to this university to earn a graduate accounting degree. But he’d miss the friendships he’s forged.

“I have a very special bond with my customers,” he said. “They’re like family to me now.”

Manager Rabia Jevad, a student at Montgomery College and regular customer, said Nadeem always does as much as he can to help people, especially customers.

“With catering, he’ll personally go and drop the food off, and he calls back to make sure everything is going the way it should,” said Jevad, who met Nadeem because her family drove from Columbia about four times a week to eat Eastern Kabob and Sweets food.

Other customers, like Asifa Hassam, visit the restaurant daily. She said the food is always fresh and her regular table at the restaurant has become her “little office.”

“A lot of customers will call him on his cell phone,” Hassam said. “We talk about anything and everything.”

Before Hassam and Nadeem became friends, she felt the restaurant needed more publicity and tacked his menus on every apartment building bulletin board in Germantown.

However, the relationships go far beyond food, Nadeem said. Customers often share good news, daily gripes and even family troubles with him.

One man called Nadeem at the restaurant because he and his wife were thinking about getting a divorce. Although Nadeem doesn’t remember who the customer was, he spent 15 minutes on the phone consoling him and passed along a phone number to call to help him find a new place to live.

“In that situation, what should I do?” Nadeem said with a laugh. “I was like, ‘I don’t know who you are,’ but I helped him out.”

However, his loyalty to his customers sometimes holds Eastern Kabob and Sweets back. While the Washington Post Magazine called his food “exceptional,” the reviewer also noted the “motel art and plastic utensils.”

Nadeem said he would like to serve food on nice plates instead of paper, but many regulars like the atmosphere. For now, he said he does not have the heart to make any changes that would increase prices, currently ranging from $7 to $13.

“If I had a choice, I would do it; it would bring more class to it,” said Nadeem. “But if I do that, I have to raise prices, and I don’t want to lose anyone.”

lurye@umdbk.com