Bolani Place pops up inside LoveCityLove, bringing Afghan flatbreads to 15th Ave E

Malali Popalzai survived the 2021 Kabul airport evacuation bombing. Now she is cooking for Capitol Hill.

“Life means this to me. I’m enjoying, I’m having this moment,” Popalzai says. “Every day, life means something really special.”

LoveCityLove, the nomadic arts and event space currently resident in the former ShopRite on 15th Ave E as the block awaits development, is now also home to something new: Bolani Place, an Afghan café run by Popalzai. If you’ve walked by lately and wondered what’s going on in there, wonder no more.

Popalzai has built her menu around the bolani, a thin flatbread stuffed with potato and spinach, with dough made entirely from scratch. On Fridays and Sundays she adds Afghan palau, the aromatic rice dish loaded with raisins, carrots, and fresh meat. There’s also a banana juice made with oat milk or whole milk, an Afghan yogurt-cucumber drink that she says people can’t stop ordering, and an Afghan burger, a flatbread construction of fries, cabbage, tomato, spices, and a sliced boiled egg, that she acknowledges can confuse people expecting a patty.

“We make burger out of fries,” she said with a laugh. “So this is who we are.”

The road to 15th Ave E has not been a straightforward one. Popalzai grew up in a large family in Afghanistan learning to cook from her grandmother and mother, who fed upwards of thirty people at a stretch. She worked for eight years as a volunteer and later employee for EveryWoman, going to villages in Afghanistan to work on ending child marriages. She was at the Kabul airport during the chaotic 2021 evacuation. The day after she got out, a massive blast killed hundreds in the same spot she had been standing.

She arrived in Seattle, where she experienced culture shock for about a year before falling genuinely in love with the city, particularly its diversity and what she describes as an unusual acceptance of people regardless of their appearance. She has since earned a degree in business administration, a master’s in sustainable development, and is currently enrolled in Seattle University’s MBA program. She also does tailoring and alterations on the side, which is actually how she ended up at LoveCityLove. A sewing customer introduced her to the space’s manager and a conversation about selling at an event turned into a conversation about running a café.

What’s driving her isn’t just ambition. It’s a philosophy about food. Popalzai doesn’t drink coffee, unusual for someone opening a café on Capitol Hill, and is openly skeptical of the heavily processed, over-sweetened food she sees offered at most establishments.

She grew up eating organically and makes nearly everything by hand, including the dough, the juices, and the yogurt drinks. “I know how to make yogurt, I know how to make jams,” she said. “Things people just go grab from the store, we make them at home.”

“I don’t have to have a luxury restaurant right now. But I have to start from somewhere.”

She plans to expand the menu with more types of bolani including pumpkin and spinach varieties, a honey-ginger-lemon tea she wants to roll out this fall, and eventually a proper breakfast offering. The longer-term dream is a full restaurant in the neighborhood. For now, hours are 2 to 8 PM every day except Tuesdays, scaled back from an earlier 11 AM open that proved too long a shift to sustain solo.

The neighborhood response, she says, has been warm. People are curious about the bolani, loyal to the banana juice, and enthusiastic about the yogurt cucumber drink. “They’re showing love and support,” she said. Her message to Capitol Hill is simple: “Life means a lot. They should be kind to each other, respect each other. And what I’m doing is providing good food to the people.”

Find Bolani Place inside LoveCityLove at 432 15th Ave E. Follow @lovecitylove for updates.

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