(Image: Queen Sheba)

(Image: King County)

A rare outpost of Ethiopian cuisine tucked into a converted 125-year-old house in the heart of Capitol Hill, Queen Sheba has permanently closed.

It had been an inconsistent couple years for the E John Ethiopian restaurant after two decades serving the neighborhood with the relatively affordable and vegetarian-friendly cuisine just off Broadway.

The restaurant survived years of nearby construction for Capitol Hill Station across the street and lived on to become part of the food and drink bustle around the busy transit center but also faced business challenges over costs and rent.

CHS’s attempts to talk with ownership about lease struggles in recent years were not answered.

Property owner and developer Dru Agarwal tells CHS they will be rehabbing the 1900-era building Queen Sheba has called home and giving the structure a new paint job.

“We are looking for a new restaurant to take it over — someone that wants to be right across from the light rail station and John and Olive and have a high visibility location,” Agarwal says. “It is all set up as a restaurant.”

(Image: Queen Sheba)

(Image: Queen Sheba)

Queen Sheba had been a family affair as it gave many on Capitol Hill their first taste of East African cuisine. Business license records show ownership by Rahel Assefa Gebre and Michael Gebremariam starting in 2002 after they took over from the family that had started the restaurant a few years earlier. In 2023, family member Abiy Assefa took over as Queen Sheba tried to recover from some periodic closures during the transition.

The building has hosted a restaurant for decades. Prior to Queen Sheba, the Zula Restaurant called the gable-front house home. The city’s historical database says the house was built around the time of Broadway’s big boom around the 1903 opening of the Seattle High School where Seattle Central College stands today. In 1937, a commercial storefront was added and the house was raised. It is much altered from its original state but any future development will likely include a landmarks discussion.

It neighbors another E John throwback as the Broadway Locksmith building continues to live on — even without the mystery soda machine.

Agarwal, who purchased the restaurant building in 2021 for $1.8 million, has focused his nearby real estate investments on improving existing structures, not new construction. In 2018, CHS reported on his $6.35 million purchase of the building currently home to the Blade & Timber axe throwing bar on Broadway just around the corner from the old Queen Sheba property where the investor said his hopes were to reinvigorate the building and be part of new growth on Broadway sparked by the opening of Capitol Hill Station.

Filling the Queen Sheba space with a new restaurant, meanwhile, could take some time. While the much loved old restaurant’s long fade provided time for a head start, several large closures this year have left restaurateurs interested in Capitol Hill with lots of options.

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