The Halal Table: The Halal Wagyu Barbecue Worth the Drive to Irving, Texas

The Halal Table

A former Silicon Valley engineer swapped his laptop for a smoker, and Kafi BBQ is now serving some of the most talked-about halal barbecue in Texas.

The Halal Table is our weekend tour of halal food worth talking about. Good food, good people.

Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi grew up in a strict halal household in Columbia, Missouri, where, in his words, there were literally zero halal options at any restaurant. He spent years in the Bay Area working in tech, including stints at Google, YouTube, and Shopify, before deciding an engineer's schedule was not the life he wanted. About six years ago he bought a smoker to cook for family gatherings. He kept buying smokers. Eventually he built enough confidence catering private events that he opened Kafi BBQ in Irving, Texas in December 2024, in a strip center within walking distance of his mosque.

1Halal Wagyu Meets Texas Barbecue Tradition

Kafi BBQ's menu reads like classic Texas barbecue with a serious upgrade: brisket, beef short ribs, and beef back ribs made from halal Wagyu, dry-rubbed and smoked low and slow, alongside a beef sausage seasoned with Iraqi spices and a jalapeno-cheddar sausage. Abdul-Kafi's rule for the kitchen is that everything gets made from scratch, down to French fries that take three days to prepare and a smoked gouda mac and cheese. The dessert case leans into his family's Iraqi heritage too, with a cardamom banana pudding that folds Middle Eastern mahalabia into a Southern classic, plus a seasonal peach cobbler and basbousa.

2Halal Barbecue in Texas Is Having a Moment

Abdul-Kafi has been open about why this restaurant matters to him personally. Growing up, halal families in most American towns had almost nowhere to go for real barbecue, and he wanted Kafi BBQ to close that gap without cutting any corners on quality. He has said the halal cuts he sources are the highest-quality meats available, and he treats that sourcing as non-negotiable. Kafi BBQ has become part of a broader wave of halal-owned barbecue spots opening across Texas, alongside places like Goldee's BBQ in Fort Worth, but it has carved out its own identity by leaning hard into fusion, from Iraqi spice blends to Wagyu cuts most pitmasters never touch.

"Our guiding philosophy is that every single thing here needs to be made from scratch."Salahodeen Abdul-Kafi, owner and pitmaster, Kafi BBQ

Kafi BBQ is only open Friday through Sunday, 11 a.m. until the smoker runs out, which some weekends happens well before closing time. For a halal family road-tripping through North Texas, or anyone who has always wondered what a Wagyu brisket sandwich tastes like next to a dino rib, it might be worth timing the drive around it.