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From burgers to birria, halal restaurants are booming in the Bay Area

Halal food is rapidly expanding and diversifying in the Bay Area. These restaurants have everything from burgers to Chinese food and barbecue.

Click to view the original at sfchronicle.com

Hasnain says:

I still need to try Fikscue!

"At their exceedingly popular restaurant Fikscue in Alameda, owners Fik and Reka Saleh offer a unique cuisine of their own making: Central Texas-style barbecue, like smoked beef back ribs and brisket, along with Indonesian curries, soups and fried rice. The Salehs didn’t initially offer halal meats during their early days as a pop-up, but said they made the change to be more inclusive. Their meat supplier Creekstone Farms is halal certified, and the restaurant doesn’t offer pork products. “So many people were very excited when we opened because there were no Texas-style barbecue restaurants they could try,” Reka said.

Seeing other nontraditional halal restaurants was also a factor: Reka noticed they did exist, but were fairly spread out. When she wanted to try something new with her whole family, which includes some members who observe Muslim dietary law, most online searches just brought them back to familiar Middle Eastern restaurants. “If we all wanted to have Chinese food or Thai we would have to drive really far,” she said. Reka is happy to see more options have become available, though Old Mandarin Islamic in the Sunset District of San Francisco is still a go-to."

Posted on 2024-02-29T05:06:46+0000