Kabul Afghan Cuisine

Best afghan food and the quality of the food and service is A 1 always worth coming here for any dinner with family or friends

The kebabs are delicious!!! Very very tasty and juicy. However the rice wasn’t very flavorful. But I am giving this place an overall four stars for their kebabs alone.
They’ve got adequate parking outside which is also convenient. Prices were a little on the higher end, but worth it for the kebabs. Wish the pilaf were better, this would become my favorite place in the city.

I have heard a lot about this place and this is my second time coming for my dad’s birthday dinner. This is where he wanted to go lol! First of all the food is outstandingly awesome. They make the food here as if it was there family event. Everything is cooked to perfection. There is no extra spices added to the food or fatty oils. I should say it’s so fancy that I call it simply heaven in ur mouth. The price matches the portion size with exquisite taste. Food service is 5 star staff is there for your needs and take good care of you. Thank you

Décor is good, the service and staff are great! My hubby and I went to their Burlingame location before, however, that is closed now. The food quality is pleasant, but not as authentic to me.

very friendly staff and owners!
Victor is like a family member when we walk in
He is our favorite server And even without asking or taking order starts preparing my dishes … How easy is that. There lamb, chicken and fish tandoor is out of this World … Love love love this place!

I had food catered to my job and I have to admit I was very impressed with their service and quality of food. Everyone at my job loved the food and kept asking me where is this food from. I had the chicken kabob, lamb kabob, spinach, mantu and eggplant catered. Everything was delicious and I can’t wait to use them again !
Btw Michelle was amazing with the whole process !

* Mantoo (onion and ground lamb filled dumplings) — 5 stars: Dumplings in an Afghan restaurant? We had to try it! Needless to say we ate it all, even the sauce. It was soft dumplings covered in a light cheesy yogurt.
* Kabab-​e-​gaw (tender cubes of beef) — 5 stars: Delicious juicy meat! Loved everything about it. If you’re looking to spice it up, ask for spicy sauce!
* Mater Challaw (tender chunks of lamb) — 4 stars: the lamb was a bit dry but other than that it was a flavorful soup based entrée with rice on the side.
Overall giving this place 5 stars due to the tasty food and unbeatable customer service. Everyone there was really nice and gave great recommendations!

Can’t believe I haven’t reviewed Kabul yet! This is one of my favorite restaurants in the Bay Area. If you haven’t tried Afghan food yet, this is a fantastic place to start. The have some great vegetarian options, including various pumpkin, spinach, and eggplant dishes. They can also prepare some of their soups vegetarian. I always order their combination kebabs though, with salmon and shrimp. The shrimp are massive, cooked to perfection, and delicious. The salmon is also cooked perfectly. Their entrees come with a salad, as well as rice and Afghan bread. For $ 25 or $ 30, you’ll leave absolutely stuffed. A must try!

Delicious food (every time) and great service.
We’ve been coming to this location for years.
**Keep up the good work.

So i was looking for a good Afgan restaurant in the redwood city/​san carlos area. I kept seeing this place come up on Unilocal over and over again. Finally, I convinced my dad who is another ethnic food lover to give this place a shot with me. We came in on a random Sunday evening expecting to get in immediately. Nope it was packed. And rightfully so. the food is delicious.
We started out with the mantoo appetizer which is these little dumplings filled with ground lamb topped with a delicious yogurt sauce. We also got the Kadu, which was raved about by other reviewers. It is a blend of sautéed pumpkin with a yogurt meat sauce. Ohhhhhh myyyyy goddddd. I could eat this every day. It was a little sweet but perfectly balanced with the flavorful meat sauce. My step mom actually went home and looked up a recipe for Kadu to try to make it. Yep that’s how you know a dish leaves an impact.
Anyway, for my entrée I ordered the combination Kabab with salmon and chicken. Both were extremely flavorful and perfectly cooked. My dad ordered the same and we were really happy with our meal. I can’t wait to try out more things on this great menu. I will without a doubt be back (hopefully soon)!

Warning: The management allows an obviously sick waiter with serious nasal drip to handle plates and serve customers even after being advised. You won’t believe what happened tonight. Read on…
First, some background. We’ve enjoyed Kabul for many years – both at the San Carlos location, as well as in Sunnyvale. The food is very tasty (4+ stars), the menu varied, with a nice selection of vegetarian, meat, poultry and fish options. In fairness, based on our collective experience over the years, I would rate Kabul four stars over time.
However, what happened tonight at the San Carlos location was simply inexcusable. Moreover, even after alerting various people, including the manager, the situation was allowed to continue, potentially in violation of health codes or recommended practices for sick workers.
Tonight, one of the long-​time waiters we recognized apparently had a severe sinus issue. As he was standing at our stable to take our order, his nose began to run profusely. I’m not talking about a little drip on the upper lip, but more like a 3 – 4 inch long hanging snot string that would fall onto his hand as he stood there, which he would wipe somewhere as he turned to the side (not sure where). He was obviously embarrassed and tried to hide it, but it was in plain sight and there was no hiding the fact he had some kind of serious sinus issue tonight.
Rather than say, excuse me, I’ll be right back, he continued to stand there and take our order. He was barely able to speak because he had to keep dealing with his running nose. We were stunned and couldn’t believe this was happening. Our hope at that point was that someone else would serve our meal. However, after taking our order, he brought over our salads, holding them with his hands (the same hands, mind you, that were just full on snot). It was repulsive and we simply couldn’t understand his judgment in this situation.
At that point, we said firmly but as politely as possible, «Please don’t serve us tonight. I’m sorry, but you appear to be ill or have a serious cold, and we don’t want you to be handling our food. Furthermore, you should not be serving any tables at all tonight and should tell your boss you’re not feeling well.» He apologized, said he washed his hands after the occurrence (hurray!), and that he would replace our salads and get a different waiter, which he did. However, to our dismay, he continued to serve several other tables around us. We were incredulous that he would be disrespectful to the other diners with an obvious sinus issue.
Needless to say, this experience totally soured our dinner. But the last straw came when we asked to speak to the manager, while understanding of our concern, told us that the waiter indicated that the post-​nasal drip was allergy-​related, and thus he was allowed to continue working. What we heard were several weak excuses that justified what happened. What? It’s one thing to have an allergy, but I’m sorry, if snot is dripping from your nose uncontrollably while you’re serving customers in a restaurant – and getting on your hands, or possibly draining onto a plate without noticing – this is beyond unacceptable. No customers want the waiter’s bodily fluids on their food, or anywhere near their food (such as the plate), regardless if it’s a cold, a sinus infection, or an allergy. Is there any foodie on Unilocal that would find that, umm, acceptable? I think not.
The manager provided us with a free dessert, which was a nice gesture, and we expressed our appreciation for the dessert. But this misses the point – the waiter should have been dismissed from this evening’s duties until his sinus situation was in control, or at least moved to a different role unrelated to food.
In summary, based on tonight’s experience, I give Kabul 0 stars for service (which was unacceptable) and 4 stars for the food, for an average of 2 stars. I would have given it no stars were it not for the fact that we’ve had other good experiences at Kabul and I would hope that tonight’s experience was uncommonly atrocious. However, I cannot understand management’s reluctance to ask a person to leave if they are not feeling well, particularly after a customer has alerted various staff to the issue.
I failed to mention that after we switched waiters, the ball got dropped on our order, and the appetizers took 45 minutes to arrive (only after I asked where they were), and after waiting nearly a full hour for our entrees; we were told that they had run out of the shrimp skewer (probably because by that time, they realized that our order hadn’t been input).
When the food did arrive, it was tasty as usual. But we couldn’t get the image of the giant string of snot hanging from our waiter’s nose past his chin. Imagine that! Kabul, you can do better, but whatever you do, PLEASE DON’T ALLOW SICK STAFF TO WORK IN A RESTAURANT ESPECIALLY AFTER A CUSTOMER ALERTS YOU TO A PROBLEM – AND THEN ALLOW THAT MEMBER TO CONTINUE SERVING UNWITTING CUSTOMERS.

I would quite happily say that Kabul is rated about half a star higher than it’s actual value, but it still provides a fantastic dining experience. The staff is all very friendly, the restaurant is very comfortable and has tons of parking, and the food is all up to par. My family and I come to this restaurant quite frequently, and have not had a bad experience yet.
I was able to finally take my parents to Kabul after talking the restaurant up to them for a year or two. We got there right as they were opening, we were let in, and sat down. Within 45 minutes the entire restaurant was packed, which can attest to it’s popularity.
We ordered a few appetizers, and some entrees and started the eating marathon. They always bring you a small, lightly dressed salad right before you get your appetizers. This is usually pretty good, and does not have any super thick, gross dressing on it. It’s lightly dressed, has a couple tomatoes, and stays relatively simple.
For appetizers we ordered the Mantoo, the Aushak, and the Sambosa-​e-​goushti. All of these were super good, came in a nice sauce, and were not super greasy even though deep fried.
Our entrees were the Korma Challaw, and two skewer plates, one chicken one beef. The Korma Challaw came with a nice portion of rice, as well as a ton of meat. The skewers were perfectly cooked, and similarly came with a decent sized portion of rice. Everything was quite good, and both my parents and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Kabul is a great experience, especially if you have never experienced this kind of food before.

Came here with a group of coworkers and really enjoyed this place.
So I don’t eat beef and try not to eat much pork or lamb but when I saw the menu, especially that the mantoo was lamb, I decided to make an exception for lamb.
Since I was feeling a little chilly, I ordered the Cardamom tea, which I wish had been a little sweeter but it was still pretty good.
Ordered the appetizer portions of mantoo and bulanee-​katchalu. While I really enjoyed the flavors, the mantoo was slightly cold on the insideof the dumpings and the portions seemed a little small for the price, so minus one point.
As my main plate, I ordered Kabul’s Combination Kabab (chose Lamb and Chicken as my options) and it came with pallow (spcied brown rice). The plate was super tasty, totally fell in love with the rice. Very generous portions of meat. Got to try a co-worker’s Sabzi Challow and I gotta say that I actually liked that one better. But I still really liked my dish and it came with a very nice portion of afghan naan. There was good spice to the meat and like I said, rice was my favorite. Totally doused it in the hot spicy chutney that came with the bulanee so that could have contributed to it.
Overall, would definitely come back! Highly recommended if you’re hungry for some afghan food. or if you’re just hungry.

Food was great, service was great. It’s a big place with lots of parking. The two of us split a kabob combo, and had chicken and salmon. Delicious. We started with the appetizer Mantoo, which is onion and ground lamb filled dumplings with vegatables. Yum! We also had a side of Challaw Kadu which is sauteed pumpkin, and that was delicious as well. (Although I later found out it is actually butternut squash, but still very tasty.) Red wine was adequate but not great. They really go out of their way to make you happy, they were friendly and attentive. (It’s a family business.) We had two appetizers, and split the combo kabob, and shared 1 glass of wine, and the bill was $ 50. And it was a lot of food!
If you both get mains, you will have food for tomorrow as well.
A nice experience. Also, another time we were coming home from SFO and stopped off late, since they stay open every night until 10pm.

There are so many different flavors in every dish, your tastebuds will be so happy! We tried a little bit of this and that and we all were very impressed! Do not recall the names of every dish we tried but can tell you that it’s all good! The chicken was so moist and flavorful. The pumpkin dish was very tasty and the little side dish of peppers was amazing! Next time I’ll be sure to remember the dishes so I can describe better… but for now… it’s just all so good!

I was really encouraged by the Unilocal reviews here but both my boyfriend and I thought the food was just okay, and a bit expensive (although the portion sizes are large, dinner for two ended up costing around $ 50 with the tip).
We got the sambosa appetizer. I thought this was tasty and the skin was fried really well. It was basically like a fried samosa, and it went along really well with the green spicy sauce.
The lawang chicken dish was just okay. I thought the meat was a little boring (perhaps too dry). The sauce was creamy but it kind of tasted like okay pasta cream sauce. I was expecting a little more out of this dish.
The beef and cauliflower dish was also just okay. I thought the cauliflower was good (tasted similar to some Indian dishes) but I thought the beef was a little dry and not so flavorful.
The rice was also not as fragrant as I wanted. Some Afghani places have to die for rice, but this was not one of them.
Service was good here.

I love Kabul! Once you step inside, you escape the bustling of El Camino Real and the glare of the San Carlos sun… And you are immediately transported to a quiet, subdued world with cushioned chairs and cloth napkins. Coming here for lunch is always a treat compared to the casual eateries my team usually hits up in Redwood Shores. The servers are all nice and welcoming.
All the entrees are pricey, but very healthily-​sized, with an average salad appetizer (iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, lots of dressing) served first. My meal is enough to last me lunch AND leftovers for dinner! Whenever I come here, I get the Sabsi Challaw. The lamb is tender, melt-​in-​your-​mouth delicious, and the spinach adds depth to the flavor. My coworkers often end up ordering the kababs, which are tasty as well (and BIG!). Arguably, the best part of the meal is the naan that they serve with your meal. It’s fresh, buttery, and fluffy.
If you like your food spicy, ask for the green sauce! Be careful of how much you put on, but you won’t be disappointed.
Note: Parking here is easy since it’s located in a plaza with a large parking lot.

When a friend after a tour of duty in Afghanistan invited me to sample Afghan cuisine, it was with some trepidation before I caved in. How can a country undergoing such turmoil be any good in the culinary arts? An evening in Kabul corrected my perspective. A Unilocal friend’s comment helped too. She said San Carlos is not being bombed and the crew in Kabul can concentrate on their cooking or shopping at the local Farmer’s Market without fear of losing their lives! How true! As for me, I realized the fact that any country regardless of ethnicity and political ideology is capable of good eats even though it might initially mean having to acquire a taste for its food. With that said, I was glad I ignored my unfounded prejudices and pleased that I spent a delicious evening in Kabul.
We were hopeful that tonight can also be a learning experience but the prim and proper server with no sense of humor was not entirely helpful. So my review may not be a 100% accurate or correct. A sweet young hostess, Marjaan, who happened to be the owner’s daughter, did make up some grounds although she is not knowledgeable enough about the food as she was American born. The décor was clean and simple. The walls were adorned with decorative Middle Eastern embroideries with matching red tablecloths.
Just about any nitwit can figure out there is an abundance of lamb in Afghanistan. After a quick browse of the menu, anyone can see that lamb and more lamb with chicken a distant second are the preferred meats. Basmati rice and naan (bread) are their main staples. To start off, my friend unequivocally recommended Pakawra E Badenjan ($ 6.25), which amazingly knocked my socks off. This appetizer came in 4 pieces and each one was batter dipped with sautéed slices of eggplant and fried. Being an eggplant lover, it was easy for me to love this dish. The batter was crispy; the slightly sour and tangy yogurt and the hearty, spicy tomato-​y based meat sauce blended together so well to produce a tongue tingling sensation in my taste buds. Not to be missed! (⁵⁄₅)
Grilled lamb chop is a classic gourmet dish commonly found in fine dining restaurants. Chupan ($ 23.25) is Afghanistan’s contribution to the culinary world where succulent lamb chops were marinated Afghan style in mint, saffron and cardamom (the marinade ingredients were just my guesses) for a mouth-​watering dish. The meat was grilled medium for a nice pinkish tenderness. Here was where the server failed me. There were 2 different sauces that I could have used to enhance the taste. One was a red sauce that looked and tasted tomato-​y much like salsa and a green sauce that had some kick to it. It was only after the meal that the hostess packed the sauces with my leftovers. They were excellent and I was sorely disappointed that the server didn’t serve them or offer them to me sooner. (⁴⁄₅ but could have been ⁵⁄₅ with the sauces).
OMG! A wok has such universal usage! The next entrée was simply known as Karayee ($ 15.95), which I had no idea it meant a wok. It was a stir-​fried chicken dish sautéed with an assortment of veggies in a mild spicy curry-​like sauce. The chef however lacked the wok wizardry (or shall I say karayee wizardry) of some Chinese master chefs. Wok hay (the «hot breath» of a seasoned wok) was definitely lacking. The delectable sauce made up for it and came with a side of challow, which was plain white basmati rice. (³⁄₅)
Being an Afghan food novice, I can honestly say the food was good although not «I can’t wait to go back» good. Maybe we were lucky we had more hits than misses but let’s face it, Afghan food isn’t quite as popular yet and will remain an acquired taste to most of us for a while. Service by this one guy was ho hum and perfunctory and being an Afghani himself, he exhibited tremendous pride in his cuisine.

The food here is incredibly delicious. It was my first experience with afghan food and I am hooked! Their spinach and pumpkin with yogurt dishes are amazing and I am not even a vegetarian. The portions are so large, it’s really a bang for your buck.
From the outside, the restaurant looks closed. Usually the blinds are all pulled shut to keep out the sun. The interior décor is classy and mostly red. Waiters here are very nice and a little bit pushy, however. I wanted to just have water but was sucked into ordering an iced tea because he kept asking me if I wanted a drink b/​c water wasn’t going to suffice. At least it was unlimited refills!
I had the lamb and spinach dish and my friend had the vegetarian trio platter. We ended up sharing though because we didn’t know the portions were going to be that large. They give you a lot of rice too.
Very decently priced and the service is super friendly! I would definitely come back to try their other yummy dishes!

Kabul Afghan Cuisine is officially one of my favorite restaurants in the Bay Area! I’ve been there twice this week and loved it.
The first time I got the chicken and salmon kabob combo. It was sooooo good and flavorful! Both were seared perfectly. The 2^nd time, I got the salmon kabob and it was awesome! My wife got the vegetable platter with pumpkin, spinach, and cauliflower. It was very good, especially the pumpkin which was sweet.
Overall grade: A