Ummah Market opens in Culmore

Ummah Market, an international grocery store specializing in products from the Middle East, had a soft opening in Culmore on Jan. 4.

The store is located at 6053 Leesburg Pike in a renovated building that formerly housed a Walgreens.

Owner Jawad Yousufi is tentatively planning a grand opening on Feb. 1, once additional fine-tuning is completed.

An in-house bakery is up and running, featuring Afghan bread, Turkish-style baked goods, croissants, baklava, and French pastries made daily.

There is a limited selection of prepared foods, and more will be added. Current sections offer halal meat, dairy items, bulk nuts, fresh produce, pantry items, and housewares.

“It’s a multicultural store,” Yousufi says. “We cater to everyone in the area. We’re still learning what people in the community want.” He suspects that will be different from the customers at his other Ummah Market in Richmond.

“Ummah” means “community in Arabic.

On a quick trip through the aisles, we found spices from Jordan, dried apricot paste from Syria, fig preserves and cheese from Bulgaria, jasmine rice from Thailand, basmati rice and cumin cookies from Pakistan, tuna from Peru, stuffed vine leaves and labneh from Turkey, pomegranate juice from Georgia, instant noodles from Indonesia, and pickles from Lebanon.

The project was first announced in Annandale Today in June 2023. An anticipated opening in early 2024 was pushed back to summer 2024. Yousufi blames the delay on construction issues. He had to upgrade the electrical transformers and wiring and it took Dominion Energy a long time to approve the changes.

The store will eventually include a Middle Eastern restaurant and café called Rumi’s House of Love, named for the 13th century Persian poet and Sufi mystic. Yousufi hasn’t set a date for the opening.