Ziafat, an Afghan restaurant that opened in August at 3400 Columbia Pike, serves kabobs and traditional rice dishes alongside Afghan and Turkish breakfast platters. The restaurant also offers table service, a feature owner Helal Habibi says he wanted to bring to the area.
A New Afghan Dining Option on Columbia Pike
Business has been strong since Ziafat’s soft opening, Habibi told ARLnow. He said he has considered forgoing a formal grand opening because the restaurant has been too busy to pause for one. Habibi moved to the United States from Afghanistan three years ago to start a business and, while settling in Northern Virginia, visited other Afghan restaurants in the region.
Habibi said he found that some Afghan restaurants he visited lacked table service or did not offer dishes he was looking for. He set out to include those features at Ziafat and says he is still refining the menu and dining experience.
Kabobs, Dumplings and a Full Breakfast Menu
The menu includes qabili palau, rice served with lamb, carrots and raisins, as well as mantu—steamed dumplings filled with beef and onions—and ashak, leek dumplings topped with yogurt and meat sauce. Other options include chicken, lamb and beef kabobs, lamb chops, and chabli kabob, an Afghan-style beef patty seasoned with herbs and spices. Chickpeas, potato curry and spiced sautéed spinach round out the savory dishes.
Ziafat also serves Afghan and Turkish breakfast platters with egg dishes, breads, jams and jellies. The restaurant’s website describes its aim as combining Afghan tradition with attentive service. It is open Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. and every other day except Monday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The Address Has a History of Afghan Dining
The storefront previously housed Kabobistan, an Afghan restaurant that relocated to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 2025 and reopened there as Bonjon Rumi, ARLnow has reported. Ziafat is the latest Afghan dining concept at the ground floor of 3400 Columbia Pike, known as Pike 3400.
Pike 3400 is a five-story mixed-use development built on the site of a former car dealership. Project details from WCS Construction describe 257 residential apartments above 15,000 square feet of ground-floor retail.
Part of a Broader Afghan Dining Wave in Arlington
Ziafat is one of two recent additions to Arlington’s Afghan food scene. Amu Kitchen opened at 4775 Langston Blvd. in August 2026 with a menu focused on western Afghan cuisine, char-grilled kabobs and homemade baked goods, according to ARLnow’s earlier coverage. Afghan dining has a longer history in the county: Arlington Magazine reported that the separate Arlington Kabob on Lee Highway opened in August 2013.
The restaurant openings coincide with growth in Afghan-American businesses and organizations nationally. The Afghan-American Foundation’s 2026 discovery inventory identified 565 publicly identifiable Afghan-American businesses and organizations across 16 metropolitan areas, compared with 307 established before August 2021. The Foundation describes the figures as an inventory, not a census. The Washington-Arlington-Alexandria region has the country’s largest concentration of Afghan immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute; census estimates put the number in the D.C. metro area at more than 17,000.
Columbia Pike's Infrastructure Push
The timing also coincides with a wave of public investment meant to make Columbia Pike more walkable and commercially appealing. Arlington County and the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority celebrated the completion of an approximately $161 million multimodal improvement project in April 2026, covering a three-mile stretch of the Pike with upgraded utility networks, widened sidewalks and improved transit access.
For now, the draw on this stretch of the Pike is simpler: a plate of qabili palau and a restaurant owner who says the food and service are still a work in progress, even as the crowds keep coming.
