2 excellent new halal restaurants in Western WA are drawing crowds

When Emad Qaifa and his brother Mahmood opened their Kent restaurant, Taste of Yemen, in January 2025, the new halal spot drew people from all over. Customers drove from as far as Oregon and British Columbia.

Qaifa said it was expected to a degree - the brothers knew they were meeting extant demand because Taste of Yemen was one of the first Yemeni restaurants in Washington, if not the entire Pacific Northwest.

Wait times on weekends ballooned and the brothers scrambled to keep up with orders of their bubbling cauldrons of lamb fahsa and platters of chicken, lamb and fish mandi with rice. If you're uncertain what to order at either restaurant, just ask staff - or try Qaifa if he's around.

"I'll take care of you," he says. "Just bring your friends."

The warm welcome for the South End restaurant convinced the brothers they could re-create their success north of Seattle. When a friend told Qaifa about an available space in Lynnwood, he jumped at the chance.

The restaurateurs took two months to lightly remodel then opened The Yemeni House in February in a strip mall just off busy 196th Street.

The Yemeni House is nearly twice the size of Taste of Yemen and the menu is much larger as well. Still, Qaifa says, people have been waiting for tables at dinner. If you've got a flexible schedule, I suggest going for lunch.

I was at The Yemeni House one recent Thursday and the dining room was calm, with just a couple of additional tables occupied. There's table service on the restaurant side as well as a coffee bar.

In terms of food, I couldn't resist the siren call of the lamb fahsa ($26.99); this dish with rich, shredded lamb is just as delectable in Lynnwood as I remember it tasting when I tried it at Taste of Yemen in Kent last year.

The dish, one of more than a dozen listed in the "authentic dishes" section of the menu, comes with a basket of puffy pita or rice. We also ordered the Yemeni foul ($16.99), a bubbly-hot dish of mashed fava beans with garlic and tomatoes; the chicken galaba ($18.99), which featured sauteed diced chicken with bell peppers, onions and tomatoes; and the Greek fries ($8.99).

"You missed all the best things," Qaifa chided me during a phone interview this month.

To be fair, I don't think it's possible to miss the best things on this menu; everything is good.

Qaifa's favorites include the lamb haneeth ($28.99), a slow-roasted lamb dish served over mandi rice, and the vegetable saltah ($18.99), which is a traditional Yemeni vegetable stew.

"You mix the rice with the saltah and the lamb," he says. "It's a perfect combination."

The whole pompano fish ($28.50), which gets baked and served over mandi rice, is also one of Qaifa's favorites and one of the restaurant's most popular dishes.

There are also a handful of appetizers, soups and salads on the menu as well as some larger-format dishes - featuring lamb, chicken and a combination of the two - designed to feed three to four people.

The dining room was transformed from a gyro spot; the walls are covered in warm wood paneling and big cushy booths are used at most of the tables. It's casual and a little rough around the edges but overall friendly. I can only imagine how lively it gets during the dinner service, the dining room filled with people sharing those large lamb platters.

Qaifa, who used to own One Million Cafe in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood before selling it in 2024, now has a full coffee bar at The Yemeni House serving coffee drinks plus smoothies. The karak tea ($4.50) is wonderful: It's a well-spiced tea brewed with over half a dozen spices, including cardamom and cinnamon, that gets enriched with condensed milk.

In just a few months, the Lynnwood location has made waves. I've already had an excited reader email me about the restaurant and Qaifa says they've been packed: "Honestly, we've been very busy. Two weeks ago, between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m., the wait time was three hours."

Now that The Yemeni House has expanded on Taste of Yemen's success, fans coming from both the north and south don't have to go so far. What's next? Qaifa jokes that "we need one on the Eastside" to help out the commuters from Bellevue, Issaquah and Kirkland.

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