We celebrated my partner’s birthday like four times over the course of a fortnight. One of those times was at Kabul House in Merrylands. I showed up about 90 minutes into the thing after a day shift at work, but I feel confident in my assessment given that we ordered a huge new batch of food for me to have by myself, whilst everyone else watched.
This is the half platter ($65), a huge dish of 2 shami kebab (minced lamb), 2 chicken kebab, and 2 tikka kebab (lamb cubes), as well as bread (pictured below). My partner, who ordered for me as I drove from work, wanted to give me the option of trying as many things as possible, but didn’t realise that it was possible to order half this amount of meat for half the price. This is definitely too much meat for one human, and this was after finishing work at 9PM and not having eaten anything that entire day apart from two soy coffees and a protein shake in the morning.
As far as the meat quality goes, I enjoyed the chicken the most, as it was juiciest and most tender, followed by the shami kebab, for similar reasons. The tikka lamb kebab was a tiny bit tougher and drier, and definitely decreased in palatability as it cooled down a bit, whilst the other two remained good throughout the course of the meal. I consider myself pretty good at cooking chicken, but I wish I could cook chicken like this.
This is bread, which came with the half platter. It is not the best Afghan bread I’ve had, but not the worst. The best Afghan bread I’ve had to date was from Gulistan Take-Away in Box Hill VIC on the 16th of September 2017.
We also had some chopan kebab ($16 for one 4-piece skewer), which were barbequed lamb chops, which everyone else raved about the tenderness of but I didn’t love.
The aashak (aushak) ($25), described on the menu as “10 fresh chives stuffed dumplings topped with yogurt and lentils” was really good. I think it’s vegetarian, but I didn’t even notice. I’d not had this before, but really loved the creaminess of the sauce, the slight bit of texture of the lentils, as well as the moistness and chive flavour of the dumplings and the overall package. I think unless you have a specific aversion to one of the ingredients in this dish, this is something you have to try if you eat here. I devoured the leftovers the following night.
Overall thoughts
I really enjoyed the aashak dumplings, and think they were the standout of my meal. The meat was not bad, but I actually think that the lamb tikka at nearby Kabab Al Hojat was better.