Afghan Kitchen

The Afghan Kitchen has held my curiosity for quite a while now. It’s small shop front sitting there on Islington Green. It kinda looks lost next to the big boys of the chains next door.

It especially grabbed my attention after hearing from some greedy buggers I know, who took up 9 seats upstairs and ate the entire menu. Which isn’t difficult as there are only 8 mains. They all raved about it, saying it was some damn good home cooked style food. 

Ever since then I’ve been meaning to make a beeline for this small restaurant. Well today, as I had survived my first week at my new job. Amazingly.

So after some Friday night drinks in a pub close to work. I headed off to Angel to meet up with Lina and grab some food.

During our monthly meeting at work, food is provided, which today was pizza. So the pizza pub was out of the question. Now I had seen an Eritrean restaurant down Essex Road. Which I am definitely going to have to try, as walking past it on a few occasions the smells waft out from inside is amazing.

Tonight though, I was pretty hungry, so as the Afghan Kitchen is within strolling distance. It won hands down.

Now, the place is really small. About 14 can sit upstairs, and about 12 downstairs. Apparently reservations are a must. We were pretty lucky to get a seat. Although, we had to sit by the front window. Which gave us an interesting view onto the street. There were some strange souls wandering past. Made the evening more fun.

As I said there aren’t a lot of choices. 4 meats and 4 veggies options. We choose the Lavand -e- Murgh (chicken in yoghurt), Qurma -e- Gosht (lamb with potatoes). We also ordered some mixed pickles and bread.

The food is precooked, but as they are all stew based, a little time sleeping in some marinade won’t do it any harm. As I never heard a ping of a microwave, I can only imagine they heat it up in a pan. I hope.

The chicken was damn good. The meat was moist and the sauce had a little smooth kick to it. The lamb was a little flat. It needed a bit more spice to help it along.

The mixed pickles had one hell of a kick to them Fantastic. The bread was nice but a bit hard.

It’s a nice place, but whether I would go back is uncertain. We’ll see. That Eritrean place is calling me.