Kabul Afghan Cuisine

Last night I had the pleasure to dine out with some friends at a most incredible restaurant. We are in California, San Carlos to be exact, attending the Better Light Owner’s Conference. For those of you that have never heard of Better Light, it is a digital scanning back used for fine art reproduction, commercial photography and high res scenics.  Basically, you take a 4×5 Camera and instead of inserting a film holder in the slot you use a digital capture back.

Well, back to dinner last night. One of the attendees had been tooling around town and interviewing residents on where their favorite restaurant was. He came across a place that was called “Kabul”  www.kabulcuisine.com and decided that this was the place we should eat. They have two locations one right here in San Carlos and another in Burlingame. The two establishments are run by two brothers and apparently they have the same menu. We went to the one in San Carlos. It was located in this little strip mall and we almost missed it. In fact, we thought the GPS had lost its mind when it told us we were there. Then we looked back over our shoulder and sure enough saw a sign saying Kabul. OK, this was a nice big parking lot so finding a place to park was easy. We walked over to where we thought the restaurant was and there was no marking on the door indicating the name of the establishment. It did have an open sign and credit card stickers yet we still were not sure if it was open – until we tried the door. Voila! The door opened and in we stepped to a wonderful dining room complete with tables draped in white tablecloths.

After being seated and presented with menus, they brought our water. We began perusing the menu and realized we didn’t really know what these things were. We were reading things like Aushak and Pakawra-e-Badenjan. What in the world is this stuff??? Granted they did have a complete English description of each item, but it would take an awful lot of reading to figure out what to order. That’s when my husband, Randy, came up with a brilliant idea. The waiter came over to the table to ask if we had any questions on the menu. Randy tells him, “We want to sample everything. Just bring us a variety of dishes, stick them all in the middle, and we will eat family style.” The waiter was so pleased with the idea, he began to rattle off all the dishes he would bring, and we just waited in anticipation for the feast that he was preparing for us.

Let me just say that we were not disappointed. We started out with the Mantoo (a lamb dumpling topped with yogurt and veggies) and Pakawra-e-badenjan (Battered eggplant with yogurt and meat sauce). For the entrée, he made several kabobs – lamb, shrimp, chicken, and deskewered them onto a big platter to set in the middle. There was also this really spunky green sauce that we used to dip our meats into. We were served assorted vegetables, rice and a pumpkin dish. All I can say is the feast was amazing. But it didn’t stop there. For desert he brought us some baklava and ice cream. I think we ate til our eyes crossed. This being said, if you are ever in the San Francisco area, San Carlos is only about 15 minutes south and a trip to Kabul Afghan Cuisine is well worth the trip.

June 17, 2010 - 1:12 pm jen - Sounds like so much fun! What a great cuisine experience. One day when we go that direction we will have to try it.

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