Uber To Afghanistan
The Uber ride to East Cambridge was awkward. Having failed to check the “solo” versus “shared” option, I ended up crunched in the back of the car with two strangers (both absorbed in loud debate over the sexual merits of their boyfriends) while my roommate squeezed in next to the driver. Perched uncomfortably in the front, she gamely asked him which local college students he found most annoying.
“Well, those Harvard kids are real shits,” he grumbled, before asking us where we went to school.
Our arrival at the packed Helmand Restaurant, named for the longest river in landlocked Afghanistan, initially did little to improve our mood. We showed up 12 minutes late to our 7:30 p.m. reservation, and the maitre d’ kept us waiting for another 20. Finally, our soft-spoken and grizzled waiter materialized from the dense wall of diners and led us to our seats. Tucked away at a small table near the front of the restaurant, my roommate and I perused the simple paper menus by the light of a flickering candle and prepared ourselves for the unexpected.
Neither of us had tasted Afghan cuisine before, much less Zagat-rated food created by the brother of Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan. Of course, Mahmood Karzai wouldn’t be preparing our food himself. Karzai, who declined our request for an interview, takes a very active role in managing the restaurant. As his wife told Boston Magazine, “He gets very upset if he tastes something that he doesn’t like.”
Karzai needn’t be upset—the food was excellent. We began our meal with Kaddo, baby pumpkin pan-fried, baked, then sprinkled with sugar and served over a creamy pool of yogurt garlic sauce. As a finishing touch, the cook drizzled a thick, ground-beef gravy over the plate. The combination was heavenly—the savory notes of garlic and beef played perfectly against the saccharine pumpkin, which would have been cloyingly sweet on its own. The mixture of textures—velvety yogurt, viscous pumpkin, and granular ground beef—enticed the tongue and made it nigh impossible to stop eating, even to breathe.
For our entree, we shared Lamb Lawand, a leg of lamb sauteed with mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic, onion, yogurt, spices, and fresh cilantro, served with sauteed spinach and Challow rice (an Afghan specialty that involves both boiling and baking to produce fluffy individual grains delicately scented with cumin). Though not quite ascending to the flavorful subtlety of our appetizer, the dish was well-executed and well-plated. The steaming piles of tender lamb, drenched in tangy sauce, formed one point of a delectable triangle whose other vertices consisted of rich, verdant spinach and moist, slightly salty rice. For the best bite, combine as much lamb, spinach, and rice as your spoon can hold (spoiler: It will never be enough).
To close out the night, my roommate and I ordered Sheerekh, homemade ice cream paired with cardamom, pistachio, dates, figs, and fresh pineapple. Though the dates were the best I’d ever tasted, the ice cream stole the show. As we lingered over each mouthful, we tried to identify the ingredient that lent this frozen treat its unusual tartness—a piquancy enhanced by the honeyed pineapple, date, and fig. Soon, however, we found ourselves distracted by the vital business of eating, eating, eating.
As our waiter delivered dessert, he momentarily withheld my spoon, quipping that I’d have to fight him for it. If he’d known how readily I would have done so, he wouldn’t have made the joke.