The Kabob Palace in Crystal City will soon have new neighbors.
A halal restaurant franchisee has signed a lease for about 2,400 square feet at 2323 S. Eads St., where it plans to open a combined Peri Peri Original and Kallisto Steakhouse inside an end-cap space where the buffet-style Kabob Palace Family Restaurant had been. The franchisee, PPOVA LLC, aims to open in about six months, according to Christian Kingston, a broker with Rappaport who represented the tenant.
In a separate, adjacent building closer to 23rd Street is the larger Kabob Palace with its familiar green-and-yellow facade. On the other side of where Peri Peri and Kallisto will open, at 2329 S. Eads, is Shawarma Gyros Xpress.
The site’s proximity to Amazon.com Inc.’s second headquarters was a selling point in the location, as was visibility along the busy Richmond Highway frontage of the property and the availability of on-site parking, Kingston said. PPOVA, a group that includes Syed Jaffari, Habib Ahmed, Jawad Kahn and Abbas Hassan, had kicked off its search pre-Covid-19, and resumed the search after a pause earlier in the pandemic.
“We were looking throughout Arlington, and the appeal of being in National Landing was great,” Kingston said, referring to the collective geography that includes Crystal City, Pentagon City, and part of Potomac Yard. “The surface parking in that area was definitely helpful as well.”
The combined restaurant will be akin to Herndon's Spice Village, a four-stall food hall from a franchisee group led by Zayan Abbasi that includes Peri Peri Original, Kallisto, Mandarin Halal Express, and Khyber Shinwari.
Peri Peri Original, similar to Nando's Peri Peri, is a chain of halal grilled chicken restaurants that started out in the United Kingdom and expanded into the D.C. region with its first location in Alexandria. Kallisto, from the same owners, is one of the only halal steakhouses in the region, according to a Northern Virginia Magazine article on Spice Village. It has drummed up quite the regional following for the way it marinates its steaks for 24 hours.
Other Peri Peri and Kallisto franchisees are on the hunt for space in areas such as Temple Hills, Hyattsville and Rockville.
Rappaport brokers Pat O’Meara and Thomas Bolen III represented the landlord, an affiliate of B.M. Smith Inc., which has one more nearly 2,300-square-foot vacancy in the Crystal City center. That end-cap space at 2325 S. Eads St. was previously leased by Sahara Cafe. Rappaport has received interest from a number of other retailers for that space as well, Bolen said, adding the halal restaurants should help to attract others.
