Modern Afghan dining comes to Oakland from the Parche team
A new restaurant in Oakland is seeking to bring the cuisine of Afghanistan to new heights. Jaji, co-owned by Sophia Akbar and Paul Iglesias of Parche, walks the line between familiar and iconoclastic, with mantu-like wonton dumplings with confit duck and miso and cocktails mixed with yogurt and Silk Road spices.
Jaji occupies the space below the Kissel Uptown Oakland hotel previously held by Occitania, Chef Paul Canales’ French restaurant that shuttered in 2023. The spacious dining room is decked out with Afghan artifacts like native drums and headpieces, and from the ceiling droop hundreds of colorful swatches that are meant to recall poppies. In the back, a speakeasy called B.Akbar channels David Lynch “red room” vibes with its crimson decor, old-but-comfy-looking furniture and vinyl records spinning on turntables.
The modern Afghan restaurant Jaji opened in Jan. 2025 below the Kissel Uptown Oakland in Oakland, Calif. Pictured: braised lamb shank with mastawa. (Hardy Wilson)
Jaji is the second endeavor from the husband-wife team who run Parche, a Michelin-recognized restaurant that celebrates chef Iglesias’ Colombian heritage. This time, it’s Akbar’s heritage coming into play: She grew up in Walnut Creek in an Afghan-American family, learning in the kitchen from her grandmother how to make the delicate dumplings called mantu. “Jaji is the expression of an Afghan-American woman paving way into the culinary world,” Akbar said in a statement. “Watching how well received Parche was, it felt like the right time and place to execute a similar concept with our next venture.”
The modern Afghan restaurant Jaji opened in Jan. 2025 below the Kissel Uptown Oakland hotel in Oakland, Calif. Co-owners Sophia Akbar and Paul Iglesias also run the Colombian restaurant Parche in Oakland. (Hardy Wilson)
The dishes at Jaji are ambitious and, like the food at Parche, quite beautiful, full of bold colors and dashed sauces and pops of fresh fruit and spices. They’ll be recognizable to anyone hailing from the Afghan diaspora, but present twists and turns in concept and presentation. The normally unfancy mantu here are stuffed with confit duck legs and floating in a duck-broth consomme tinged with white miso. The fried snow trout is a whole butterflied fish whose head is positioned toward the heavens, as if to ask “Why me?,” doused with Afghan chili oil and accented with saffron and grilled lemon.
Leaning more traditional is the braised lamb shank — a must-have at true Afghan restaurants (with a great version down the street at Kamdesh) — that is accompanied with mastawa, a Tajik/Uzbek dish with rice and broth sometimes known as “liquid pilaf.” And there are skewers, as there have to be: One with Wagyu top sirloin marinated in pomegranate-ginger syrup, another with ground lamb and mint and another with springy chunks of king-trumpet mushrooms.
The modern Afghan restaurant Jaji opened in Jan. 2025 below the Kissel Uptown Oakland in Oakland, Calif. Co-owners Sophia Akbar and Paul Iglesias also run the Colombian restaurant Parche in Oakland. (Hardy Wilson)
The drinks menu was designed by Iglesias and Parche’s beverage director, Eric Syed, and includes eyebrow-raising options like a Zira Gold with mezcal, cumin syrup and black-pepper tincture, recalling the history of spices being used as currency along the Silk Road. There’s also a Salaamati with scotch, Rooh Afza syrup and dogh (a Persian yogurt drink), and a robust menu of zeroproof cocktails that can be sipped in the B.Akbar that — note to squatters — sits 20 people for what the Jaji team calls a “90-minute curated drinking experience” with “small bites, encouraging conversations.”
Details: Open 5:00-9:30 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 5:00-10:00 p.m. Friday-Saturday at 422 24th St., Oakland; jajioak.com