Business & Tech

Father, Son Bring Afghani Food and Culture to Renton

Afghan Cuisine opened in Renton in early June.

Ali Ibrahim, the owner of Renton's new Afghan Cuisine restaurant, doesn't need to look far to find his biggest fan.

That title belongs to his 18-year-old son Toby, who works the waiter/host/bus boy role in the restaurant's dining room while his father mans the kitchen in back.

Toby happily embraces his job, helping novices through the menu and sharing his passion for the food and culture of his father's hometown of Kabul. He is also fiercely proud of his dad.

Ali, while still youthful in appearance, has not lived an easy life. According to Toby, he left home on his own at age 15, moving to Pakistan and then the Kashmir region in India before arriving in Essen, Germany. There, Toby was born, but the youth lost his mother at just nine months. Since then, it's been father and son.

The two later moved to California where Toby completed high school. In the last two years, Ali had run Afghan Cuisine out of Federal Way, but he moved the restaurant to Renton and opened at its present location at 924 Bronson Way S about three weeks ago.

"Renton's been great," Toby said. "People have been so nice and generous."

His father, said Toby, has no formal restaurant training. But he had a genuine desire to keep alive the food of his homeland and share it with people who only know of war in Afghanistan. The trade he learned along the way.

Toby aims to help his father work toward that vision. "Our goal is not just to run a restaurant," he said. "Our goal is to make people understand more about what is Afghanistan, what is our food, our culture and our history."

For example, the Afghani people are well-known for their unabashed hospitality. Over a cup of cardamom-infused chai, he shared parts of his father's journey back to visit his family in Kabul in 2004. It was an unannounced visit and his presence wasn't expected. A little boy - his nephew - greeted him at the door and invited him in without knowing who he was.

Want to hear more? You'll have to stop in, order some chai and ask Toby yourself.

More information

Visit Afghan Cuisine on Facebook.


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