Musa Muradi, owner of Afghani restaurant Kabul House. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Musa Muradi, owner of Afghani restaurant Kabul House. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Kabul House 7/190 Stoddard Rd, Mt Roskill (far end of the Tulja Centre) Ph: (09) 620 5888 Open: Sunday-Wednesday 11.30am-9pm, Thursday-Saturday 11.30am-9.30pm It's best to call ahead to make sure you'll get a table. Takeaway available.
Musa Muradi cooks food remembered from Afghani New Year celebrations of his youth. The youngest of nine siblingsand an uncle to dozens, 37-year-old Muradi recalls massive, fragrant feasts in the family home, then the playing of cards until dawn. Afghani New Year - Nowruz - took place last week, incidentally, making this a rather poignant time for Muradi. His family haven't all been together in 15 years.
Bring enough people to Mt Roskill's Kabul House, and an Afghani party vibe can be fashioned in a carpeted corner of this otherwise unostentatious restaurant. In that corner, groups sit cross-legged atop a vast handwoven rug and communally devour exotic comfort food. There are proper tables, too, for more conventional diners. Wherever you sit, Marudi, his wife Marzia, and their staff - sometimes including the couple's 13-year-old son - will take, cook, and deliver your orders with smiles so sweet it's easy to forgive what is sometimes quite slow service.
Qabuly Pulao ($21) is one of the restaurant's most popular dishes. It is basmati rice cooked in lamb broth, subtly spiced with the likes of cardamom, cumin, turmeric and saffron, sweetened by raisins and julienned carrots. Dig in and you'll find the generous hunks of slow-cooked lamb lending a succulent greasiness (in a good way) to the rice grains. Skewers of marinated meat can supplement or sub in for the lamb.
Dumplings (small $14, large $22) at Kabul House are plump and robust. Once pierced, steam hisses and aromatic juices seep from within slippery, rubbery hides. For a minced beef filling, choose mantu. For leeks and spring onions, go with aushak. Both are delicious, but it's their topping that makes Afghani dumplings my favourite: garlicky yogurt and tomato paste sprinkled with split peas and lashings of dried mint. There's a hint of chilli, a suggestion of cumin. Variants of this yoghurt-mint sauce also come atop the banjan borani (fried eggplant served with naan), next to the potato and leek turnovers (for dipping), and in the form of a refreshing drink called doogh (do try it).
Doogh ($3) is similar to Turkish ayran: a pale green blend of yoghurt, salt, cucumber, sparkling water and mint. It's so moreish I often get through several glasses in one sitting.
If you've got room for dessert, try firni ($5). This light, chilled, saffron-infused eggless custard is laden with slivers of almond. If you don't have room for dessert, buy a firni anyway. It comes in a takeaway plastic container, after all. As do the glorious mango lassis ($5).
The qabuly pulao, firni, and Afghan doogh. Photo / Brett Phibbs
Muradi was born in his restaurant's namesake, the Afghani capital, during the Soviet occupation. He married Marzia in Pakistan, where both their families had fled due to war, and immigrated to New Zealand in 2007. Once here, Muradi seized opportunities as they arose. Jobs at wrecking yards and supermarkets, taxi driving. Anything to support his far-flung relatives and own growing family. Then he and a mate started up a plastering business, which gave Muradi a taste for entrepreneurship. In 2018, when a chef friend suggested opening an Afghani restaurant together, Muradi didn't hesitate. Now he has both the plastering company and Kabul House and is a very busy man.
"Maybe business is in my nature," Muradi says. "I am not so afraid of the risks because I believe in myself."
His belief appears well-founded. As Covid continues to cause restaurants to founder, Kabul House keeps bustling. Marudi laughs recounting a recent conversation with his accountant: he asked if he should apply for government support during Auckland's red traffic light setting (notoriously tough for the hospo sector), and she told him his restaurant's income hadn't dropped "even 1 per cent" - let alone the 40 per cent required for funding.
How has Kabul House fared so well during the pandemic? Muradi reckons it's because there's nothing else quite like his food in Auckland (Point Chev's more upmarket Afghani restaurant, Samadi, appears to have "temporarily closed" due to Covid). I'd wager it's a combination of that, and the old-fashioned hospitality Kabul House still manages to exude in what is a rather inhospitable era.
Marudi is proud to embody the Afghani tradition of treating guests as friends of God. "I really love my customers and show this with the food I cook," he says.
