A recent survey of “America’s Favorite Cities” conducted by Travel & Leisure Magazine and CNN ranked the Twin Cities among the cleanest of the 25 largest metro areas in the country, and among the tops when it comes to theater and nice people. But, according to the survey, we’re near the bottom (21st) when it comes to diversity. Seriously? What timing. Foodservice News was set to present our first FSN Notables—Ethnic Restaurants. And, for the record, we don’t much like the term “ethnic,” since it’s definition is nebulous at best. But it was easier to fit in a headline than “Non-European or American cuisine.” And even that statement is untrue, especially in today’s era of globalization—heck, globalization has been occurring for centuries in dubious forms, and nations’—or regions’—cuisine is evidence. But to that survey, we at FSN deliver a haughty snort. Diverse culture abounds in these fare cities, and we know our restaurant list only scrapes the surface. One need only wander University Avenue in St. Paul or Central Avenue in Minneapolis to gain global perspective, and have a dining experience of a lifetime. But many on this list have provided the foundation on which more recent first generation immigrants can grow their business. Our advice: Visit them soon!
—Mike Mitchelson, editor.
Beirut Restaurant
West St. Paul
651-457-4886
Joseph and John Khoury
Beirut Restaurant was founded 23 years ago by Joseph and Rita Khoury. Their son, John, mans the kitchen with Joseph. “We do everything from scratch, right down to soaking our own garbanzo beans,” John said. The Khourys are natives of Lebanon.
The keys of Lebanese cuisine:
John: A lot of fresh ingredients. We use just about every ingredient that you can think of. It’s not prepared quickly, though. For it to be done the right way, it does take time. You let the flavors take care of themselves. We don’t overpower the food with anything. Indian food has a lot of curry in it. We don’t really have a particular spice. We just let the food take care of itself.
A traditional dish:
Kibbe nayee, which is our steak tartare, but with lamb and beef. For the first ten years, my parents had a hard time, because people weren’t big into lamb. Domestic lamb here is gamey, not the same as in Lebanon. A lot of the lamb we use is Australian lamb, it’s as close to what we can get to back home.
Is the menu all traditional Lebanese dishes, or do you experiment?
We’ve stuck to traditional Lebanese dishes—remained stubborn with it. We’re not going to make any Alfredos to keep everybody satisfied. What they serve in restaurants in Lebanon is what we try to serve here. We are authentic. Fish is a big deal in Lebanon, but we don’t deal with it much here, because the fish that would be authentic, you can’t get here.
The meal best know for:
Our mezza, which is traditional Lebanese dining. It’s nine different appetizer items, served family style, followed by a main course of char broiled kebobs.
Best kept secret on the menu:
Probably our kafta kebob. Everybody who tries it loves it, and nobody knows what it is until they’ve tried it. It’s ground lamb and beef, mixed with onion, parsley and spices and char broiled.
For someone new to the cuisine:
Our chicken and beef kebobs are really simple, but still Lebanese. Chicken and beef aren’t complicated, and we don’t do anything to them to complicate them. It’s a good piece of meat, marinated right, cut up in cubes, put on a skewer and char broiled. If you can’t handle that with some rice pilaf, what can you do? If they like that, next time they can get something else.
Is marinating a key to the cuisine?
Yes. A garlic puree sauce, mixed with some corn oil, lemon juice and salt. Take that with pepper and salt, and let the chicken sit in there for a good three days before we cook it. But with beef, we just put salt and pepper on it. We’re real big on keeping it simple.
Hoban
Eagan
651-688-3447
Eunjin Kim
Eunjin Kim arrived in the United States from South Korea in 1989; she joined her brother in the Twin Cities to study at the University of Minnesota. She worked as a waitress at Shilla, a Korean restaurant in St. Paul that closed recently. At Shilla, she met her husband, Young Lim, a cook, and the two decided they could run their own restaurant—they opened Hoban in Eagan in 1994.
Describe traditional Korean food at Hoban.
We serve barbecue, stir fry and other popular Korean dishes. With them we serve pan chan (pickled vegetables served with the meal), and this includes kimchee (spicy pickled cabbage). For a Korean meal, you cannot talk about it without kimchee and rice. And in Korean culture, you don’t necessarily have main dishes—there is no boundary between main dishes and pan chan. Everything can go with rice and side dishes. But with a restaurant, you order some dishes and then lots of side dishes come with the meal. Other traditional dishes are rice cake soup, and dumpling soup. Those are usually New Years traditions, and seaweed soup is usually a birthday tradition.
Is there a signature dish?
Bul go ki—barbecued beef, pork and chicken—and kalbee, which is barbecued beef ribs, and those are No. 1 popular. If we bring American friends to Korea, first thing we want to feed them is beef bul go ki, sliced beef marinated with house sauce, and then kalbee. And I’ve seen some Korean people bring American customers to Hoban, and they recommend first thing the bul go ki and kalbee. There is also the chop chae, a transparent noodle stir fried with vegetables and little bit of meat.
For more adventurous customers…
Our soups. There are spicy soups, kimchee chigae (with kimchee, tofu and pork) and a soybean soup and bean curd soup. But if they want to be safe, the dumpling soup and rice cake soup, because those are not spicy but very tasty.
The spice:
We use a lot of the dried, red hot pepper to make food spicy. I don’t know how American people make a food spicy (laughs). And we use a lot of fresh green hot pepper, too.
Off-menu requests:
I cook seaweed soup sometimes, and spicy rice cake stir fry, or squid tempura. We make kim bop (similar to sushi)—those are the most common things native Koreans ask even though it’s not on the menu, we make it every single time. I have a very high demand for them, I should put them on the menu.
Nalapak
Columbia Heights
763-574-1113
Vishwanatha Nadig
Walking into Nalapak, one doesn’t sense the menu is vegetarian. The rich odors emanating from the kitchen trigger a rabid appetite sure as any steakhouse. Vishwanatha Nadig is a partner in the Minnesota-based Bombay Inc., which purchased last year the Indian vegetarian restaurant Udupi. During March 2006 the group changed the restaurant’s name to Nalapak, and the restaurant continues to serve some of the most acclaimed Indian vegetarian cuisine in the Twin Cities—notably attracting a fair share of carnivores.
Nadig is also a local physician who moved from Chicago to the Twin Cities in 2002 for a job, thinking he’d only be here for a short time, but, as many who immigrate to Minnesota, they find they like the culture and the people. Originally from Bangalore, India, Nadig had no restaurant experience. “It’s been challenging,” he said. “Transition is always hard, I’ve learned a lot.”
The added workload hasn’t killed Nadig’s sense of humor, either. “I’m a vegetarian and extremely liberal—save the environment, all that—this gives me an opportunity to extend my cause,” he said, laughing.
The restaurant group plans to open two more restaurants, more upscale and serving both vegetarian and non-vegetarian fare. “We’ve found the market for vegetarian restaurants somewhat limited,” Nadig said with a smile.
How difficult is it to find a chef to focus entirely on a vegetarian menu?
The kitchen runs as a team, without a “chef” as a center point. We hire the best cooks. We want to brand the name of the restaurant as opposed to glorify the chef.
Traditional Indian food:
Southern Indian food uses more coconut. It had similar spices as the north, but they’re used differently. Northern cuisine is more cream based, uses potatoes and onions.
Is vegetarianism common in India?
Only about 2 percent of the population in India is vegetarian. But most restaurants in the past were vegetarian, but that is changing. Vegetarian doesn’t always mean healthy—a lot of ghee (clarified butter) was often used. For anything to be delicious, it has to have good ingredients—and fat. But much of that can be substituted using vegetable oil. We don’t use a lot of butter, and for pure vegetarians and vegans we can accommodate, such as substituting paneer cheese with tofu. We also steam many of our ingredients.
Signature dishes:
Iddly, which are rice and lentil patties served with sambhar (a vegetable stew) and chutney. Dosai, which are traditional to southern India, are very thin crepes. We serve them with different chutneys and sambhar, or potato fillings.
For those unfamiliar with the cuisine:
I would encourage they try our buffet, it’s the most cost effective way to try about 20 different dishes.
Machu Picchu
Minneapolis
612-822-2125
Fernando Palomino
Fernando Palomino arrived in the Twin Cities from Peru via New York in 1984. He and his wife, Hilda, opened Machu Picchu in 1993. “It was my dream to open this place for a long time, and I did it,” he said. Palomino’s daughters, Carla and Vanessa also work in the restaurant.
Did you have restaurant experience before opening Machu Picchu?
I worked in the restaurant industry in New York, and my family had restaurants in Peru—I grew up in that business.
How did you get to the Twin Cities?
The company I worked for in New Jersey closed the plant and transferred me here. I never expected to come to Minnesota, but it was the best. My grandkids have been born here, everybody is here, and they love it.
How did you think the Twin Cities would respond to Peruvian food?
I opened it because Peruvian food is one of the best in the world, and that’s not because I am Peruvian. You can find Peruvian restaurants everywhere in the world. We have wonderful food, everything is from scratch, and that’s the only way we can prepare that food. And the people of Minnesota love that. I enjoy it anytime they finish a plate and they say wow that’s good. I really feel so great.
Are you still cooking?
I have a different chef now. Four years ago I left the kitchen. I tell the chef though, whatever they need, I can help. Fridays and Saturdays I’m in the restaurant, my wife is controlling everything now, and my daughters Carla and Vanessa work here.
How do you define Peruvian food?
We are very rich in seafood. But we have some immigration from different places—we have French cuisine, Chinese. And there is the Incas cuisine—everything is mixed.
In Peru, we have three regions. We have the coast, the jungle and mountains—three places with a lot of variety. The Incas make a lot with the potatoes, and a lot of the ceviches—there are almost 120 kinds of ceviches in Peru. Other countries like Brazil have more Spanish influence.
Is there a signature Peruvian dish?
Lomo saltado is very Peruvian. A stir-fry with onions, tomatoes, a little bit of cilantro, fresh-cut French fries and pieces of beef tenderloin. All stir-fried together, and comes with basmati rice. And this is very, very good.
When someone visits Machu Picchu for first time, what should they try?
Ceviche. That is the best because it is so fresh. It’s so good as an appetizer. I also recommend the empanada. If they like seafood, we recommend the parihuela, a seafood soup. Combination of fish—the halibut, shrimp, a little bit of squid and mussels, pieces of king crab and clams. This is really a very good soup.
What’s the best-kept secret on the menu?
One of my personal favorites is papa la huancaina. Not many people order it, only those that know. It’s a potato, we do a (spicy feta) cheese on that, it’s very famous in Peru.
Safari Restaurant
Minneapolis
612-872-4604
Abdi Hashi
Abdi Hashi, who co-owns Safari Restaurant with his brother, Sade, and other family members, arrived in the United States in 1992, when Somalia descended into civil war. His family soon followed. As recent news reports, the situation in Somalia has not improved—Abdi has not visited his homeland. “There is no central government, and there is constant fighting,” he said.
Safari Restaurant opened in the early mid-1990s, and was the first Somali restaurant in the Twin Cities, Abdi said. Sade began working at Safari under its previous owners. “Sade has a finesse for cooking,” Abdi said. “He’s very creative about that.” Sade worked his way through the ranks until the opportunity came to purchase the restaurant in 1999.
Abdi said he runs the business side of the restaurant, and Sade develops the menu, cooks, and otherwise runs the restaurant. “He is the man,” Abdi said. “I help with the business part of it. He sets up the menu, cooks... I can whip up some eggs, but that’s about it. …Sade went into the restaurant business, and introduced the rest of us to it.”
While Abdi and his family are Somali, the restaurant cooks food from the entire East African region. “Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya—the food travels and crosses borders,” Abdi said. “It’s pretty similar, and uses the same spices.”
Somalian cuisine is perhaps a bit spicier than others, however, because, being a coastal nation, it benefits from a lot of spices from the region which includes Arabia and India. “There’s a large population of Indians there,” he said.
A signature meal in Somalia is:
Goat meat, which is a regular staple in every household, and there are a variety of ways to prepare it. There is also ke key, house-made noodles, either mild or spicy.
If there’s someone unfamiliar with the cuisine, what do you suggest?
I would steer them to the traditional dishes. The goat meat for example, is a very mild meat, it’s milder than lamb, for example. We do have milder spaghetti dishes, too. We also created our “chicken fantastic,” which uses more of a cream sauce.
Spaghetti?
Southern Somalia was colonized by the Italians. But you can’t say (our spaghetti) is Italian anymore. Our sauces are much meatier. Northern Somalia is more British influenced.
The hidden menu gem:
I think the beef suqqar. It’s one of my favorites, lean pieces of beef, slow cooked with spices.
Pad Thai Grand Café
St. Paul
651-690-1393
Pooh Phetnongphay
Stop into the Pad Thai Grand Café in St. Paul on nearly any night, and dining room is filled. The food is the attraction, of course, but the Thai artifacts and wall art also catch the eye. It’s a grand space, quite different from the restaurant’s former, tiny location just a few doors east, where it opened in 1999. But when Red Fish Blue closed its doors in 2003, Pad Thai owner Pooh Phetnongphay leapt at the chance for larger digs. “There were 39 people on the list (for the space),” she said, and she didn’t hold much hope of getting it. Obviously, it worked out.
Phetnongphay arrived in the United States in 1980, a refugee with her five siblings and parents during the Vietnam War fallout. Originally from Laos, her mother was from Thailand, and Phetnongphay spent much of her childhood in Ubon, Thailand. She opened the restaurant because she and her mother loved to cook. She gained restaurant experience over the years, including a year in the kitchen at Sawatdee.
She can still be found most nights in Pad Thai’s busy kitchen working the line. “That’s what I love to do,” she said.
What separates Thai food vs. other Asian cuisines?
We use more curry paste, coconut milk, lemon grass, key lime leaves—more herbs and spice.
Do you remain traditional on the menu or try to break new ground?
We stay traditional in the regular menu. With our specials on our dinner menu, we added garlic lamb and basil lamb, and that’s what people really love.
For someone new and apprehensive about the cuisine, what do you recommend?
We always ask if they want noodles, then try our pad thai. If not, they can always try the green curry dishes—the flavor coming from herbs, the lemon grass, the ingredients, it’s not really strong. When you bite in there’s a little kick to it, but not too spicy.
Is traditional Thai more spicy than what is often served to Midwesterners?
Yes, more spicy, like a basil (dish) they smash some chili pepper in it, but here we hold it off a bit on our spice, because the neighborhood has a lot of elderly coming in also. But we always have a spice rack on the side (at the table).
What are you most well known for?
The curry and pad thai, and we have to recommend our spring rolls—they are really good. And we have a mango sticky rice dessert.
What are the dishes you like the most?
I really like the asparagus stir fry, the more vegetable stir fries.
Do you get many special requests from off the menu?
We do, some people will say, “Well, I had this kind of dish in Thailand, can you make it,” and I come out from the kitchen and ask them to explain what’s in there, how it tastes, and we can accommodate that. Thai food is similar all over, but dependent on how different people do the seasoning.
How do you stay current with the cuisine?
I travel back to Thailand about three times a year. I’m always tasting the food and see how they create, because in Thailand they really create and update their food fast.
Istanbul Bistro
Minnetonka
952-476-7997
Ismail Karagoez
A small kitchen hasn’t stopped Ismail Karagoez from churning out Turkish cuisine that’s developed a loyal following. Arriving in the United States in 1983 with his American-born wife, Sue, who he met in Germany, Karagoez set about on his goal to open a restaurant to feature his native Turkish cuisine. The journey took him through several Twin Cities kitchens, including the Monte Carlo. He also opened two restaurants along the way before finally finding a spot for the Istanbul Bistro.
What are the influences on Turkish cuisine?
Our food is very close to Italian and Greek food, especially Greek. The Middle Eastern food is a little different. We have kebobs and stew dishes—seafood stews. I guess more than the other countries, the kebob is our specialty.
Are there spices unique to turkey?
Yes, it’s called isot (pronounced ee-sote). That is a special sun dried, mild chile pepper. It’s a lot of work how they do it, they sun dry them, crush the pepper, then mix up the olive oil, and then dry them again, and brings a really good flavor to all the meat dishes and other stuff.
What is your specialty?
The kebobs are tender and juicy and top of the line. It’s really good. And then scallop kumkapi with feta cheese sauce, and, of course salmon grape leaves is tops. The lamb stew we have topped with feta and kasha cheese and baked in the oven, that is really good too.
Do native Turks ask for off-menu items?
Lahmacun. It’s ground beef and lamb, onion and tomato parsley and isot, mixed and put on dough and baked together—it is really good, and I used to have that on the menu. A lot of people—Armenian, Turkish—they used to order that a lot, but I have a really small kitchen. One time a Turkish family ordered 15 to go one Saturday night, and my God, that was really a pain. It’s not hard to make, but it takes a lot of space to prepare, and also my oven is so small. My wife and I are looking for a space with a big kitchen, then I am going to put that back on the menu, and then I will also start making my own doner kebob.
If there’s someone unfamiliar with the cuisine, what do you steer them to?
To be honest with you, I recommend everything. If I’m not comfortable with any dishes, I wouldn’t put them on the menu. But my favorite is rosto, which is pot roast cooked at least nine hours with a tomato sauce. We have shrimp halikarnas, which is the aromatic tomato sauce—I cook it with olive oil, pepper and onion, and kalamata olives and caper in it, and cook the shrimp together and put them in clay pot dishes, top it with feta and kasha cheese, serve them over farafella pasta.
El Burrito Mercado
St. Paul
651-227-2192
Tomas Silva, Jr.
El Burrito Mercado moved to its current location on Cezar Chavez Street 13 years ago—the business opened in St. Paul’s West Side in 1979, by Tomas and Maria Silva, both natives of Aguascalientes, a city in central Mexico (the two met in Minnesota). With the larger space, Silva’s created a more traditional Mexican marketplace—in addition to a full grocery store and deli, they built a restaurant, El Café. “We try to bring elements that you would find in markets in the larger cities in Mexico, where you have a little bit of everything,” said Tomas Silva Jr., Tomas and Maria’s son. The market continues to be a family-run operation.
I see Burrito Mercado products in other grocery stores…
We had a wholesale operation where we sold to restaurants and markets. Supervalu was a customer of ours at one time for Hispanic grocery items. We closed that, and branched off where we have El Burrito Mercado private label chips and salsa that are sold at Kowalski’s and other Supervalu stores.
What was the idea behind the restaurant?
My mom has always been a great cook. In the old location she had a kitchen to make items for our deli case, and sold some salsas and sandwiches she would make. In this space we could do a bit more, and my mom thought she’d like to open a cafeteria style restaurant.
Is she still cooking?
She still helps out with the recipes, but doesn’t do daily cooking anymore. All the recipes in there, for the most part, are hers. The signature item recipes, the carnitas, tamales, rice and beans—the staples—are pretty much hers.
Do you have a head chef?
It’s a team, there’s a crew that does all the salsas. We have a crew that works on tamales, and then the morning crew makes pretty much the “day-of” items eaten in the restaurant. We’ve got people trained to do specific products, and we’re going more in that direction to break it up.
Is the menu focused on the region your parents are from?
We try to do a little bit of everything. There are certain dishes that we make that are more traditional and popular in different parts of Mexico. Seafood, for example—it’s regional for some parts for Mexico, and we’ll feature it. Same for Caribbean foods, while it’s not Mexican food, there’s still a large population of non-Mexican Latinos that are looking for food in a restaurant setting, and we’ve got some pretty good recipes people like.
What are the dishes the restaurant is best known for?
Some of the soups, the menudo (tripe and hominy), the pozole, we do caldo de res (beef soup) and we have a daily soup feature, and everyday it sells out. It’s real popular right now, maybe it’s with the weather change.
Best kept secret on the menu…
I’d say the chiles rellenos—the stuffed poblano peppers. We sell those at the restaurant and at the deli to go.
Barbary Fig
St. Paul
651-290-2085
Brahim Hadj-Moussa
For 18 years, Brahim Hadj-Moussa has cooked his particular brand of southern France-influenced North African cuisine—the regions in which he grew up and worked—at his St. Paul restaurant, Barbary Fig. Many try to label his food—which includes his signature tagines, rabbit, lamb and fish dishes—as one or the other, but even to Hadj (as he is known to regulars) it defies explanation. “It’s influenced by, really, everything—when you cook for 30 years, my background is right now,” he said, laughing.
Your philosophy…
I think there are chefs that cook traditionally, or exactly how their mother cooked. And there are some restaurants and some chefs, they cook and create—they are their own mother. So, I am my own mother (laughs). After a while, your hands do the work, and you have no idea as to how you can do this. But I pretty much try to stay with the ingredients and with the thinking of North Africa and Southern France—the Mediterranean.
Your cooking continues to evolve…
I know sometimes people they go to North Africa, and they said, “Oh, we had this dish, but it’s a little bit different,” and I said, “I left that place 30 years ago,” (laughs). It’s like a painter. At one point, everybody takes something from somebody, and if you’re good, you take it to another level, and it becomes my cuisine.
Is there a spice or herb that’s particular to each region?
It’s hard because it’s really a mixture of spices. The Barbary Fig has two personalities. If they are thinking this is North Africa, probably cinnamon or saffron will come to their mind. And if they go to the French style, it’s probably the Provencal herbs, anchovies and red wine.
What’s the meal you’re best known for, and what’s the best kept secret on the menu?
The one that they really ask for is the bastilla (chicken wrapped in phyllo pastry topped with a fruit chutney) that is a very popular. A secret, although it’s not a secret, is the couscous royale. I do it once in a while, and people really like it. When they hear all the meat—the sausage and the lamb and the chicken—into the couscous, they go for it. That’s really popular, but I don’t do it very much, because if I do that dish, no other dishes will sell.
If someone is coming in for the first time and is unsure about the menu, what do you recommend?
If it’s a couple—and I don’t know if it’s politically correct to say (laughs) but women in general go for the chicken, and the men in general, go for the (red) meat. If they aren’t adventurous, we suggest the merguez couscous or the shekshouka, because there is a sausage and meat, and we know the guy is going to like it. Women like the chicken tagine. It’s a really simple dish, but with the chutney, spices, presentation and the garnish, it’s a little bit different. It’s really just rice and chicken with a tomato chutney—very simple.
Puerta Azul
St. Paul
651-646-7003
Moji and Sonia Sadr
Puerta Azul moved to its St. Paul location from Minneapolis’ in 1999. The restaurant is owned by Sonia and Moji Sadr and has become both a neighborhood hangout and destination restaurant. The couple, married for 22 years, opened the restaurant in 1998, deciding to forgo their studies to be engineers. Moji handles much of the day-to-day operations, his wife, Sonia, native to Puerto Rico, is the chef. “We are still breaking the (culinary) ice in Minnesota, so to speak,” Sonia said. But things are changing, she added, recalling it wasn’t long ago that a person could not find cilantro at Cub Foods. “Now they have an ethnic aisle.”
How would you describe Puerto Rican cuisine?
Moji: It has a lot of influence from the Spain and the Mediterranean, they brought their cuisine, then there were the products grown in the island, and the Spanish brought Africans to work the sugar cane, so you have the influence of three different types of food. It’s nothing like Mexican. Puerto Ricans cook a lot of the dishes with a sauce called sofrito, which is garlic, onions, green and red bell peppers, and cilantro, they grind it all together and then add tomato to it, and that becomes the base of the cooking. Puerto Rican cuisine also has a lot of heavy marination of meat.
There are tostones, which are plantain sliced up and fried, flattened and seasoned. Rice and beans also are main staples of Puerto Rican food. The beans are cooked in sofrito, and then they usually serve a little bit of meat with it, mostly pork and fish and some chicken.
Is there a signature dish of Puerto Rico?
One would be pernil asado, which is pork marinated in garlic, salt and pepper and slow cooked, and basically it falls apart and it’s served with rice, beans and tostones. The other is arroz con pollo, which is marinated pieces of chicken breast cooked in sofrito sauce. We serve both for lunch and dinner.
What do you recommend to someone new to the cuisine?
All the ingredients we use are very regular type of ingredients that people use in daily cooking—onions garlic green and red bell peppers—everyone is familiar with those—and cilantro. If it is the first time, I tell them to try the pernil asado. And if it’s night, if they like chicken, I say try the mango. It’s still a bit spicy, but it’s still very tasty and served with rice and beans. Chicken kebob is another dish we recommend, because everybody is familiar with chicken pieces. So that’s how we break ‘em in.
Khyber Pass
St. Paul
651-690-0505
Masooda and Emel Sherzad
Emel Sherzad arrived in St. Paul to attend school at Macalester College in 1985 and discovered a piece of his home country. An Afghani restaurant, Khyber Pass, had opened a year earlier on nearby St. Clair Avenue. The restaurant’s owners emigrated from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Sherzad struck up a friendship with them, landed a job, and, eventually, married their daughter, Masooda, who worked at the restaurant. In 1991 the couple purchased the restaurant, and later moved it to its present location on Grand Avenue. Masooda does “a lot of the cooking” at the restaurant, Emel said, while he works the front of the house. “Afghans are very proud of their hospitable nature, and running the restaurant allows me to be a host, which is something I absolutely love,” he said. “I think getting together over food is communion—you build community.”
Is there a signature “Afghani” dish?
Emel: There are many. We have an appetizer called aushak, which are leek dumplings, which I consider has in it the soul of Afghani cuisine. It’s a dish that brings influences from many different cultures—Afghanistan is situated in the crossroads of the ancient world, and you had all these different people crossing that land over the centuries, so they have all left their influence in music, culture and food. …Afghani food is very much a family affair—every family has their own special blend of spices.
A typical Afghani dish is pilau, a rice dish that’s cooked with either caramelized onions and meat stock, which makes it brown, or with meat and spinach stock, which makes it green. But that’s not just Afghani. In India, they call that kind of rice biryani. They have it in Persia and Turkey also.
What would you recommend for someone new to the cuisine?
Leek dumplings, then probably suggest the kebob, and maybe a dish with mung beans (round, green colored bean, very small, about half a grain of rice) and the meatballs in yogurt sauce, with a little side of spinach. If it’s a weekend and we have the kadoo burani, a butternut squash special (topped with garlic-laced yogurt).
A best kept secret on the menu?
On some weekends we have a special called do piaza, it’s a lamb shank served not on rice but on bread, with an onion salad on top. Lately, whenever I serve it, I see many people sucking on the bone.
How did the events of 9/11 impact your business?
Right after September 11, business more than tripled. We had such a show of support. People would come in, tell me that they were concerned we were OK, and that there was no backlash. People brought flowers many times—it was very positive. Then interest became less, but now with the book The Kite Runner, a lot of book groups came to the restaurant, and asked me questions about Afghanistan and its culture and its food and the political situation. That’s also something that I like to do, to put a human face to Afghanistan.
