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Food

A Richmond Gas Station Slings Some of the Tastiest Yemeni Food in the Bay

Luke Tsai
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On a picnic table: half a roast chicken over a bed of orange-tinted seasoned rice, served in a plastic takeout container with a small tub of green hot sauce on the side.
Halal King's chicken mendi is one of the many surprisingly homey Yemeni dishes customers can find at a gas station convenience store in Richmond. (Luke Tsai/KQED)

The Kwik Serv on Carlson Boulevard in Richmond isn’t likely to make any local guidebooks, unless they’re curating for niche interests like “Inexpensive Gas Just off the Freeway” or “Bitcoin ATM Access.”

Lately, however, the gas station convenience store has drawn visitors for something a bit more unexpected: Halal King Kitchen, a takeout window that serves some of the Bay Area’s tastiest Yemeni food.

One could make the case that this scrappy intersection marks the apex of fine gas station and liquor store cuisine. Just across the street, amid shelves lined with Hot Cheetos and six-packs of Modelo Especial, the Carlson Food Market houses a combination taqueria and Krispy Krunchy Chicken (i.e., the people’s choice for gas station fried chicken). Then, last spring, Halal King opened inside the Kwik Serv and began hawking even rarer delicacies — saucy, aromatic stews infused with fenugreek; a full Yemeni breakfast menu; and the crowd favorite, chicken mendi, one of the most sublime versions of takeout chicken and rice I’ve had in the Bay.

The facade of a gas station convenience store, with a big sign for "Halal King Kitchen."
Halal King has been inspiring gas station customers to do a double-take since it opened in the spring of 2023. (Luke Tsai/KQED)

The restaurant is a joint effort between owner Ali Mused and his uncle, Hamdan Mousa, who is the head chef. After immigrating from Yemen to Oakland eight years ago, Mousa cut his teeth cooking at Yemen Kitchen, a staple in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Last year, Mousa’s friend, the owner of the Kwik Serv, asked if he’d like to take over the convenience store kitchen. Mused came on to run the business side of things, and before long, the big “Halal King” sign on the store’s facade — and the tantalizing smell of cumin and roast chicken — started causing gas station customers to do a double-take as they pulled up to the pumps.

Yemeni food shares a number of dishes in common with other Arabic cuisines, and some of our region’s best-loved halal markets and shawarma-and-kebab shops have Yemeni roots, even if they don’t advertise themselves as such. What sets Halal King apart from the crowd is its focus on the cuisine’s homier, more distinct dishes. As Mused puts it, “Every Yemeni dish is home food. You’ll never leave the restaurant without feeling full.”

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Part of what that entails is a kind of generosity and hospitality not typically associated with gas station food — for instance, the cup of hot, sweet Yemeni tea that Mousa hands you after taking your order. By far the most popular dish among Halal King’s Yemeni customers is the chicken mendi (often spelled “mandi”), which comes with a half roast chicken, dusted with cumin, that has taut, crispy skin and meat so tender and succulent that it falls apart at the slightest touch. This is served over a bed of seasoned rice, with a tub of the zippy, tomato and cilantro–based Yemeni hot sauce known as zahawiq on the side — “basically salsa with no onions,” Mused explains.

It is a lot of food, but it’s also supremely difficult to stop yourself from devouring the whole thing in one sitting. By the time I was done, there was nothing left but a neat pile of bones, completely picked clean.

Mousa also makes a fantastic version of salta (aka “saltah”), the fenugreek stew often described as Yemen’s national dish. It’s a cozy, soupy stew, loaded with shredded chicken and faintly medicinal in its herbaceousness — the perfect thing to sop up with rounds of pita on a blustery winter night.

Two round plastic takeout containers on a picnic table. To the left is foul, a soupy, orange-hued bean stew. To the right is the shakshouka eggs, a kind of chunky vegetable scramble.
Two of Halal King’s traditional Yemeni breakfast dishes — foul and shakshouka eggs — on the picnic table outside the restaurant. (Luke Tsai/KQED)

This is almost certainly also the only gas station in the Bay that serves a full Yemeni breakfast menu — and, with traditional offerings like sautéed liver, one that doesn’t make any concessions to the Western palate. On a recent morning, I enjoyed Mousa’s pleasantly spicy Yemeni version of foul — the classic Arabic bean stew — and an order of shakshouka eggs, which turned out not to be the tomato sauce–poached eggs I expected. Instead, it was a kind of chunky scramble, studded with onions, tomatoes and peppers. All together, it made for one of the most satisfying breakfasts I’d eaten in months — all the heartier because it came with an entire bag of pita.

Mused estimates that Halal King’s customer base is about “50% Yemeni and 50% American,” with many of the Yemeni customers traveling a long distance for his uncle’s food, having followed him from his Yemen Kitchen days. In that way, this Richmond gas station has become a destination restaurant for chicken mendi and salta devotees.

For locals who just stumble on this food because they happen to be low on gas at the right time and place? It’s the very best kind of surprise.

Sign advertising the "Kwik Serv" gas station, with sign for "Halal King Kitchen" underneath. In the background, the sign for Carlson Food Market advertises Krispy Krunchy Chicken.
The apex of fine gas station cuisine. (Luke Tsai/KQED)

Halal King Kitchen is open at the Kwik Serv gas station convenience store (1503 Carlson Blvd., Richmond) Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m.

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