Q’s Halal Pizza brings global comfort food to San Pablo Avenue

The gyro plate arrived like an argument won before it started. Twenty bucks at Q’s Halal Pizza on San Pablo Avenue, and what you get is this: a mountain of ground lamb formed into tender, seasoned pieces, sitting on a bed of rice that actually matters.

The lamb doesn't look like it was sliced from a rotating spit. It was ground and formed, which sounds like a downgrade until you taste it and realize somebody in that kitchen spent time getting the seasoning right, getting the texture right, making sure each piece held together without turning into a hockey puck. Lots of it, too. Enough that you’re not doing mental math about whether you got your money’s worth.

Basmati rice. Long-grain. Each grain is separate. This matters more than people think. Rice is half the meal at places like this, and Q’s knows it. The rice gleamed under the lights like it was trying to make a point about standards. Pita bread came warm on the side. Soft enough to tear, sturdy enough to hold up under sauce and meat and whatever you’re about to pile onto it.

The salad was what it was: lettuce, cucumber, tomato. Nothing fancy. Nothing trying to be California about it. Just cold and crisp and doing its job.

Then the sauces showed up and justified the whole operation. Two containers. One was yogurt-based, probably tzatziki or something close, cool, tangy, the kind of sauce that exists to put out fires and make you feel like you’re taking care of yourself even while you’re not. The other was bright green coriander chutney, sharp and herby and aggressive in the way cilantro always is when it’s fresh and unrepentant. That green sauce didn’t apologize for anything.

You’d take some lamb, drag it through the yogurt, hit it with the chutney, and suddenly understand what people mean when they talk about San Pablo Avenue opening up. Not just Five Star Chicken moving in from Vallejo or Taco El Tucan holding down the block, but places like Q’s that have been here doing this thing where the menu sprawls in six different directions and somehow all of it works.

Because here’s what Q’s is doing: They’re making halal pizza. They’re making Indian food, biryani, tikka masala, and chicken kabobs. They’re making Mediterranean wraps with falafel and hummus. They’re making burritos with rice, beans, and pico de gallo. They’re making Philly cheesesteaks. They’re making samosas stuffed with potatoes and peas. They’ve got a pizza called “Mama Mary’s” with lamb gyro and pepperoni on it, which sounds insane until you remember that this is America and nobody asked permission to mix things up.

The menu is like a map of who’s living in Richmond and what they want to eat. You want wings? Holla at their Halal wings, regular or spicy. You want a bowl? They’ve got lamb bowls, chicken bowls, falafel bowls, all over basmati rice with tzatziki and chutney. You want something wrapped in pita? They’ve got regular gyros, Philly gyros, and falafel wraps. You want pizza? They’ve got cheese pizza and they’ve got “Da Meats” with pepperoni and lamb and chicken piled on top.

It’s the kind of place where the pizza oven and whatever they’re using to cook tikka masala are probably within arm’s reach of each other, and nobody thinks that’s weird because why would it be weird? This is where San Pablo Avenue runs through the North and East. This is Richmond’s Gourmet Ghetto. People eat different things. Sometimes people eat different things on the same day. Sometimes they eat different things on the same plate.

The gyro plate held up all the way through. The lamb stayed tender. The rice stayed separate. The pita stayed soft. The sauces didn’t run out even though we were using them liberally, which is how you’re supposed to use sauces when they’re that good. By the end, we’d cleaned the plate down to nothing, scraping the last bit of rice and chutney mixed with the last bit of yogurt.

Outside, San Pablo Avenue was doing what San Pablo Avenue does. Cars passing. People working. The tire shops, body shops, taco trucks, and chicken spots all doing their thing. Inside Q’s, dudes were scrolling their phones, waiting for to-go orders, people scurrying out the door with white bags tightly held.

This is what the corridor is now. Places like Q’s making six kinds of food and making all of it work.

Q’s Halal Pizza: 12847 San Pablo Avenue, Richmond, California

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