Afghan Restaurant, Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi
By Sid Khullar • May 13th, 2008 • Category: Restaurants in South Delhi, Reviews
(4/5)
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Ashwin (of MentorLink fame) took us out to the Afghan restaurant, Lajpat Nagar yesterday.A foodie himself, Ashwin likes finding restaurants and places to eat in little known places. “Before they start dishing out commercial crap”, are his words on the subject.
Anyhow, more of an eating house than a restaurant the way we all expect it, the Afghan restaurant is a very small place (20 covers in all) with a few tables and a ‘takht’ in one corner. The takht is a raised platform covered with carpets on and behind it. A traditional form of eating, it was quite refreshing and different to sit cross legged and eat. I’ll bet most of us haven’t done so in quite a while. First off, we were served water only on asking about 20 minutes later, the service is raw, uninformed but friendly and finally, the place is a bit dodgy at best. |
| Having got all that behind us, lets get to the good part – the food.
We started with the Manto and a chicken leg kebab. Mantos are Afghanistans answer to the Tibetan momo or Chinese dimsum. Composed of lightly spiced meat in a flour shell, it is steamed and served covered with one layer of beaten yoghurt and a second layer of a tomato based dressing. The chicken leg kebabs were heavily scored chicken legs, coated with dry (I think) spices and deep fried. They appeared burnt and rather dark initially, but were perfectly cooked and quite delicious when we actually bit into them. One thing about Afghani food is the nearly total lack of spices or more specifically, the chilli hot spices. The food isn’t bland, it has seasonings and spices, but hardly any red or green chillies. The owner of the Afghan Restaurant, Wahidullah Noory, who took over the place a year back, says Afghani people sometimes walk in after not having eaten anything substantial for 1 – 2 days because they cannot tolerate the spicy nature of Indian food. Apparently 80% of their customers are Afghanis and 20% are Indian Kashmiris and foreign tourists. Continuing our repast, we ordered Dogh, Dashi kebab and a mutton korma with Afghani naans. Dogh is a lassi (watered yoghurt whipped with some spices) with mint, onion, tomato and salt, served in large beer mugs. The Dashi kebab are mutton ribs served in an oily gravy composed wholly of half fried onions and some spices. The korma was unlike any other korma I’ve eaten anywhere else. Essentially very well done mutton in a thickish onion tomato gravy. The naans again were unlike any other naan I’ve eaten. Served in square portions, it was totally devoid of oil, made of whole wheat flour and quite springy in texture. So, there we were, sitting cross legged on a carpeted takht, with large single portions of food in front of us, naans in hand and doing our best to demolish everything. By the way, we weren’t eating in individual plates – we did it Afghani style – all for one and one for all – all of us ate from the same portions only keeping our naans and Doghs to ourselves. We also chanced upon an elderly, huge, gruff looking Afghani gentleman named Mohd Alim. He apparently was/is the head of the Afghanistan High Court. When I requested a little smile for my photo, while he obliged, he also said that “We’ll smile only when our country is free of war”. Surprisingly soft spoken and gentle in demeanor, he too had come to the Afghan for an authentic Afghani meal. Summarising, we had 1 portion each of Manto, chicken leg kebab, doshi kebab and mutton korma. We had 3 portions of Dogh and naan. The damages for a meal for three came to INR 460 – which was surprisingly low. They do home deliveries, takeaways and accept credit cards. Afghan Restaurant: H-7, Krishna Market, Near Gurudwara, Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi – I, +91.98734-28432 |
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Sid Khullar is a self confessed food addict who likes cooking, writing and photography... and travel, if it gets him closer to a good book and interesting food.
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That’s an interesting post. I wonder if we have anything similar here, I shall have to investigate. The food sounds good, as did the whole experience, would you go there again? Very colourful pictures!
The food was quite unlike anything we’ve had before. It was a friendly, warm and colorful ambience.
Yes, I think I will be going there again, but only rarely, as I could do without the calories.
Bless! Have you started the daily swimming yet??
yes ma’am, nearly. every other day or so, depending on when work leaves me.
I’m very pleased to hear it!
The food sounds good. I admit I did wrinkle my nose at the “no spices” part of it. However I would like to go there sometime
hi did u learn photography n cooking? Just came through your blog,nice pictures,r u trained?
hello amit,
I’m happy you like the blog and pictures. I learnt cooking and photography myself, as i was interested in doing so.
technically, no i am not trained in either.
sid
hi,
thanks a lot for ths post, i had heard about this place but had no idea how is it. after reading this i think i will have to raid the place. it will be helpful if you can give me some direction to find it.
arijit
@Arijit: sorry, i don’t remember the route… why don’t you try calling the restaurant at the numbers mentioned. i’m sure they’ll be very happy to help.