By james art 
“It took me five years to do breast rubbing,” says Salatin Abdul-Kafi, a pitmaster behind the Kafi barbecue, a new place certified by Halal, which opened in Irving in December. “Five years and make a barbecue sauce.”
This attachment certainly traces: before blending the breast in Irving, he was a technology engineer in the Silicon Valley. Do you know the scissors icon that allows you to cut a video on YouTube before sending it? He built this. Abdul-kafi is a professional calf and Kafi BBQ is a brain product that works in detail details.
Although he pursued a career in technology, Abdul-Kafi has spent his entire life thinking of food. Born in Missouri by Iraqi parents, he grew up in the family’s grocery store. As an adult, he set about drying his own beef for fun. He can describe a detailed piece of corn bread he ate in 2017. His relationship with his smoker borders romance. In Kafi, he draws inspiration from the kitchen of his childhood: the signature he rubs includes Sumac (a saturated red spice obtained from Sumac Berry) in nodding of Sumak-Irrika, his father, which his father cooks over charcoal; Like the citrus, reminiscent of dry desert lime that grows in Basara, Iraq. Even the process of choosing citrus products has been technically obtained: it tests a number of peels before landing on a specific variety of oranges from California. He found the oranges in Florida too sweet.
Step exactly, Wagyu is waiting for you.
When he conceptualized Kafi, he knew two things: like a pious Muslim, he wanted the restaurant to be halal and wanted to serve Wagyu beef (“I’m obsessed with Wagyu beef,” he says). But there is a reason for the shortage of restaurants for barbecue halal Wagyu in Dallas: Wagyu is expensive and halal meat is expensive, so the certified by halal wagyu is insanely expensive. In addition, since the halal certification only allows for a significant prices, high quality should not fit into the Halal-Meat business model often. Therefore, Abdul-Kafi, who has no external investors, decided not to limit himself to meat suppliers, which he specifically identified as “halal”, and instead went to seek the highest quality Wagyu from suppliers who simply accidentally possess a certificate.
“Before Kafi opened, there were two Zabihah Halal barbecue restaurants,” says the anonymous creator of IQfoodreviews, the Instagram account that reports Dallas Halal Food. (Zabihah suggests the most stringed hala standards.) Of the two – Smokin ‘Grill Express and Dickey Barbecue of North Coit in Richardson – the latter is not fully halal, he explains. Although it provides a separate menu for Halal Zabihah, the regular menu includes pork, which is prohibited by Islamic law. “Kafi is the only place that makes Halal Wagyu. It comes with a premium, but there is a clear difference in quality. ”
After Abdul-Kafi moved to Irving in 2022, he was glad to make breasts at home for new friends from his mosque and cook a barbecue for Suhoor festivals during Ramadan. He also enjoyed positive reviews. As more and more acquaintances not only praised his breast but began to execute orders, he played with the idea of opening a truck for food. In 2023, Abdul-Kafi went full technique, creating a place for Google Maps for a non-existent barbecue football on the North Crown Boulevard “Just to see.” Following the search terms that consumers there, he learned that Irving’s good people really want a barbecue. “Irving was a dead barbecue area,” he says. And so the search for the perfect certified halal Wagyu began.
Fried fried potatoes are cooked at Wagyu Tallow.
By getting rid of the mediator, Abdul-Kafi can afford to get American abbreviations of Wagyu with a marble score of nine plus 12 of Wagyu X Ranch in Itans, Texas. Once a week, he rents U-Haul, drives 20 minutes to the Wagyu X cold storage facility and charges. Buying directly, according to him, he does not pay much more than it would be beef from a ranch outside the state, making a similar product. It also imports beef from New Zealand (due to its strict hala standards, the country is a popular exporter of halal meat) and does not use an intermediary for these shipments).
Wagyu is not the only factor that raises restaurants. With the parsar paper rolls on the table and “nice to meat” painted on the wall, Kafi looks like your typical barbecue, but with some booms it flourished. The decor includes a partition that Abdul-Kafi has built stone by stone and custom furniture from Turkey on the closed porch. The fountain does not have coke or PEPSI products, but the root carbonated gas, prepared with organic cane sugar. Dijon’s bitterness in the barbecue sauce is imported directly from Dijon, France. Chefs make every side of zero, even stirring their own ruffs for pasta and cheese, and cutting each potato for fried potatoes.
Kafi is open on Friday to Sunday. Every weekend so far, Lines Snake around the parking lot and food is sold before 5:00 pm still, Abdul-Kafi says he will never stop to refine the details-to-do personal touches that say Kafi stand out in a city filled with excellent barbecue S “People don’t realize how many tinkers should happen in the barbecue,” he says. “I love when the time is the reason why something has a good taste.”
Pitmaster and his smoker.