Local Afghan restaurant again makes exclusive Yelp list

Earlier this year, the popular crowd-sourced review site Yelp released its fifth annual “Top 100 Places to Eat in the U.S.” For the second year in a row, a small restaurant located in a strip mall less than five miles from Fort Belvoir was the only Washington, D.C. area establishment to make the list.

Afghan Bistro, located in the Alban Shopping Center near the Fairfax County Parkway/I-95 interchange, is a family-owned restaurant featuring what it calls “modern authentic Afghan cuisine.” From the outside, the establishment’s blackened windows and non-descript signage make it easy to overlook, but once inside, the atmosphere is warm and inviting.

Owner Omar Masroor and his family opened the restaurant in fall 2015, and it wasn’t long before it started winning praise from local food critics and recognition on “best of” lists, including Washingtonian’s 100 Very Best Restaurants and Cheap Eats. The bistro’s extensive menu includes a variety of appetizers (mazza), beef-based entrees, chops and kabobs, stews, vegetarian dishes and desserts, among other options.

Perhaps what’s most notable about Afghan Bistro’s cuisine is its cultural history. According to Masroor, the restaurant is the only one of its kind in the area to feature a pre-war menu. “We’re trying to take cooking back to how it was 100 years ago,” he said.

Foods are prepared from scratch without butter, cream, cheese or preservatives, instead leaning heavily on spices like cardamom, saffron and turmeric, which have been shown to have health benefits, said Masroor.

Like the Svalina family who owns Richmond Highway-based Cosmopolitan Grill, the Masroor family fled their war-torn homeland years ago and made temporary residence in Germany before coming to the United States. The immigrant families also share the common thread of having achieved so much success that they opened a second outpost. Last fall, Masroor opened Bistro Aracosia in the Palisades neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

Being situated so close to Fort Belvoir, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and a Department of State annex, Afghan Bistro gets “a lot of military” patrons, according to Masroor. “It’s like a small United Nations over there,” he added.

Afghan Bistro is open Monday from 4 to 10 p.m.; Tuesday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. It’s closed Sundays. Reservations are recommended and can be made at OpenTable.