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 siblings and 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).