Sofia Levin reviews: Afghan Rahimi Restaurant, Dandenong

In a sentence: the most popular Afghani restaurant in Dandenong.
The damage: banquets $38 to $55, mains $35
Top tip: head around the corner to Afghan Najimi Restaurant for dessert
Quench your thirst: green tea with cardamom and saffron or soft drink
If you like this: Afghan Gallery (Fitzroy), Afghan Shaheen Restaurant (Sunshine), Ashy’s Afghan (Ashburton)

Afghan food is full of flavour and spice, but it’s not top-of-mind the same way other cuisines are. It’s an interesting mix of Persian and Indian, so you’ll find spices and aromats such as cumin, cardamom, cloves, chillies and saffron alongside green herbs and leafy spinach. Fruit-studded rice is usually the base and yoghurt goes on just about everything.

I asked Instagram where the best Afghan restaurant in Melbourne is, and the majority said Rahimi. It’s in Dandenong, where most of our Afghan eateries are. The interior is opulently decorated with tasselled velvet drapes, bejewelled wooden chairs and amber marble tables complete with lazy suzans. It’s a mammoth space, designed for large gatherings such as weddings (there’s a throne on a platform for the bride and groom) and iftar feasts.

Usually people order banquets, which range from $38 to $55 per head. There were dishes I was eager to try that weren’t included though, so I ordered a la carte for our group of six. It was a comparable at $40 per head. We left satiated, but not stuffed.

Kabuli pallow was the dish that convinced me to ditch the banquet: a fall-off-the-bone lamb shank hidden beneath a mound of fragrant Afghan rice, speckled with caramelised carrot strands and currants. It came with a bonus lamb mince kofta (meatball) in tomato and pea gravy, similar to dhal.

You could visit Rahimi for kebabs and nothing else – they’re that good. The sword-like skewers are slow-cooked over charcoal, which seal in the juices and add a smoky flavour. The choices are chicken or lamb tikka, sekh kebab (marinated mince) or a mixture. In serves of three, they work out at about $12 each.

Afghan dumplings are called mantu and date back to the Mongol Empire, when Afghan and Turkic people would travel along the Silk throughout Central Asia (I only had to travel to Dandenong). The tasty parcels are filled with lamb mince and onion, steamed, and then topped with tomato gravy and yoghurt.

We also ordered chicken jalfrezi, a curry stir-fry with Bengali roots where diced chicken is cooked with capsicum and onion, spices and a little chilli. For me it paled in comparison to the sabzi, a vegetarian dish of fresh spinach cooked down with peas, tomato and garlic until it’s a concentrated flavour bomb. My only complaint is that the small dish was extremely overpriced at $35, the same cost as meat options. The borani banjan – fried eggplant in fresh tomato and yoghurt sauce – was the same.

It’s worth noting that these a la carte dishes all come with rice, salad, traditional flat bread (nan) and spicy, tomato-based Afghan chutney and yoghurt dip. Technically we could have had six of all of the aforementioned given we ordered six dishes, but two serves of the sides were provided. You could conceivably request the outstanding plates of rice and salad (one for each main) but we were full and avoided food waste.

We drank green tea scented with cardamom and saffron (standard soft drinks are the only alternatives) and skipped dessert, of which there was only gulab jaman (a single fried dough ball in sugar syrup) served with tea for $6. The largest banquet also includes fereni (Afghan custard pudding).

On a whim, we went for dessert around the corner at Afghan Najimi Restaurant (aka Afghan Kabuli Sheer Yakh) at 305 Thomas Street – not to be confused with the more popular Najimi Restaurant at number 295. The latter was busier, so we decided to share the love. Plus I liked the look of the separate, covered dining area at number 305, which reminded me of being overseas. This dessert shop specialises in sheer yakh (literally cold milk). The ice cream is made using the same ingredients as Indian kulfi (any mix of condensed milk, milk powder and spices), but is served as scoops, in a tower of cylinders with heavy cream and white corn powder, or with shaved ice and rosewater-flavoured pink vermicelli noodles. All three come scattered with pistachio and cardamom.

Afghan Rahimi Restaurant
23-29 Walker Street, Dandenong.
afghanrahimirestaurant.com