The Halal Table: Columbus Gets a Halal Kitchen Open Until 2 A.M.

The Halal Table

A halal kitchen serving rice bowls, gyros, loaded fries, tacos and pizza until two in the morning, four miles from our kitchen table.

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

We usually write about a city we wish we lived in. This week the story is four miles from our kitchen table, which almost never happens, so forgive us for being slightly insufferable about it.

On Friday August 28, Prime Street Food opened inside the Italian Village Market at 1041 Summit Street in Columbus. The first fifty people through the door got a free rice bowl. The kitchen runs from 2 in the afternoon until 2 in the morning, which is a set of hours that tells you exactly who it is for: Ohio State students, third shift, and anyone who has ever finished Isha, looked at the fridge, and decided against it.

Who is behind it

Prime Street Food is a joint concept from Harrison's Food Truck and Boss Eatz, two names Columbus already knows. Harrison's has been running halal Mexican street food with an Indian streak out of a truck on West 3rd Avenue, which is a sentence that should not work and absolutely does.

The new menu is the same instinct scaled up. Indian style rice bowls. Gyros. Loaded fries. Tacos. Pizza. Every bit of it made with 100% halal ingredients, ordered from a self serve kiosk and carried out in a bag. No table service, no waiting for a check, no negotiating with anyone about whether the meat is fine. It is fine. That is the point.

Our goal is to provide delicious food, quality service, and a welcoming experience with every order.Prime Street Food, on opening

Why the hours matter more than the menu

Here is the thing we keep turning over. For most of our lives, being Muslim and hungry after 10 pm in an American city meant fries. That was the whole option. Fries, and a quiet conversation with yourself about whether the fryer was shared.

A halal kitchen that is open until 2 a.m., in a neighbourhood market, next to a campus, is a small thing that is not a small thing. It means the late night food in this city now includes us by default rather than by exception. Somebody looked at who is out at midnight in Columbus and decided we were part of that crowd worth cooking for.

It is the same shift we wrote about when a halal burger chain became the only burger in a San Jose mall food court, and the same one behind the Yemeni coffeehouse boom. Not a niche being tolerated. A niche becoming the default.

If you are local, go this week while the opening energy is still on. Order the rice bowl, then order the loaded fries anyway. And if you are the friend who always ends up driving everyone to the late night spot, you have earned the mug.