For years, Fardowsa Ali has dreamed of opening a restaurant where she could share her recipes with the Twin Cities.
“I’ve been cooking a long time for my family,” says Ali, who has six kids between the ages of 15 and 25. “I was like, you know, I need to share with outside people, not my family, this healthy food.”
Since August, she’s been doing just that at Albi Kitchen, a colorful, joyful restaurant on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis’s Loring Park neighborhood.
The menu at Albi Kitchen is full of happy surprises. Take the drinks: There are no descriptions on the menu, and when I ordered the Manju Refresher ($6.75 for a medium) during my first visit I was more or less expecting juice. Instead, what arrived at our table was a mango smoothie, rich and silky and bright, and served in one of those textured glasses that are so nice to run your fingers along—like a pain stim sensory toy that also contains a drink. The Vimto Acai Refresher ($5.75 for a small) I ordered on another visit was served in a lowball tumbler and was deep purple, lightly effervescent, and dotted with tapioca pearls and fresh muddled berries.
Creative drinks, served in corresponding glassware—it’s more than I’ve come to expect from counter-service dining operations, but Albi Kitchen extends this thoughtfulness to everything. Delicious, sugary Somali Qahwa (coffee) arrived in a carafe with a gold-etched glass cup and saucer. (Worth noting: We’d gotten a small ($4.50), and there was enough in there to enjoy during our lunch and to pour into small to-go cups after the meal.) Our food and drinks were shepherded to the table on cute white trays.
It’s all a bit more welcoming, and more relaxed, than your typical fast-casual setup. Groups gather and chat at the restaurant’s high-top tables or convene in the comfy lounge chairs lining the wall by the window. Though their days are surely numbered, there are wicker chairs and tables outside on the sidewalk along Nicollet for those who want to soak up these last gorgeous fall days.
One of Ali’s sisters did the branding for the restaurant; she wanted it to feel young and fresh. “It’s the kind of restaurant you dream of opening when you’re a little girl,” my dining companion observed during one visit, noting the flowery mural splashed across one wall and the shelves full of little vases, trinkets, and coffee mugs.
And, of course, that care extends to the food. Everything at Albi Kitchen is made from scratch daily and it shows. The sambusas—palm-sized, golden-brown, and absolutely stuffed with fillings—are reliably great, whether you’re going for the veggie ($6 for three), chipotle chicken ($10.50 for three) or even the Philly steak ($12 for three), which might actually be my favorite of the varieties I’ve tried so far. It’s full of beef but also peppers, onions, and herbs, lightly cheesy and heartily seasoned. If anything, my only complaint about the sambusas is that they’re almost too large to dip into the cup of accompanying sauce, which provides an added pop of heat.
We haven’t even gotten to the dessert case, which is full of towering cake slices, cannoli, halwa, and more. I left my last trip to Albi with a slice of sesame cake ($5.50)—butter yellow, buttery soft, and ever so slightly sweet—stowed away in my backpack for a time when I was no longer stuffed with sambusas.
“Most food we have here, it’s Somali food, and I don’t want our kids, born here, to forget their culture and the recipes,” Ali says. “I want it to continue.”
With food like Albi’s, it surely will. During one recent visit, I watched as a fella at another table repeatedly approached the counter to order more and more food, and I completely understood where he was coming from. Everything was so tasty—surely I could put down three more sambusas? What about three for the road?
“Love in every flavor,” reads a message scrawled in gold along one of the restaurant’s walls, and you really can taste it, which is exactly what Ali wants. “You’re cooking, you’re seeing people eating, and that makes me happy,” she says.
Albi Kitchen
Address: 1411 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis
Hours: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday; 10 a.m. to midnight Friday to Sunday
