Afghan Rahimi Restaurant

Afghan Rahimi Restaurant is my our new favourite Middle Eastern restaurant. Because of my strong recommendations, N came for the first time to celebrate a mutual friend's birthday. N was so impressed, she demanded to come back in a couple of months' time for her birthday.  The restaurant is usually occupied but not crowded, which is a pity because they serve up some of the most amazing meals I have ever had. Together with the warm service and the generosity of the owner, this is one restaurant that truly deserves to be more well-known. Dandenong can be a little dodgy at night, but with street-side parking directly in front of the restaurant, there's no reason not to visit.

We always get the Banquet, which lets you try a good number of variety of dishes and has free-flow rice and naan. The banquet is $35/pax, but I walked away each and every time feeling absolutely stuffed and happy as a clam. 

The Naan comes with a variety of chatni dips, but the bread remains the star. Crispy on the edges but soft and chewy on the inside. Amazing. My friend kept piling his plate with more naans, until I warned him to save some space for the rest of the dishes. 'Nuf said.

The second dish is Mantu (steam-cooked dumplings) that was fragrant and pretty lovely by itself. 

I love the meatball Kofta, and I felt a pang of anxiety after I wolfed down my portion. The sauce was extremely addictive, and I would make sure the bowl is within arm's reach at all times so I can scoop out every last bit of the sauce with naan.

I wasn't keen on the Borani Banjan (brinjals), until I had my first mouthful, and an explosion of flavours burst through my thick head. Brinjals are hard to cook, but these were always perfect: they are soft without being mushy. R never liked eggplants, but now she is a deep convert as well.

The traditional Afghani Rice was a perfect carb accompaniment to the dishes. They were extremely fragrant and generously scattered with pomegranate seeds and cranberries. And it's free-flow, so you can eat to your hearts' content.

The star of the night is their grilled meat. They serve both chicken tikka and lamb backstrap. I love love love their chicken tikka, which was succulent, juicy and came with traces of the charcoal-grill.Speaking as someone who arrived to this restaurant for the first time for dinner absolutely stuffed from lunch (something with me and life-planning doesn't go together), this piece of meat may singularly be the most delicious piece of meat I had ever eaten in my life. You know how Singapore sells satay, and you would whack the peanut sauce on the satay meat to make it fragrant? Well, adding peanut sauce to these perfectly grilled meat is a sin. Between the kebabs here and those in Persian Flavours , they are the best meat-on-a-stick I have ever come across. The lamb can be slightly more tough, especially if you let the lamb sit for half an hour. So eat up quick!

And that's it! Sure, you can get another round of naan to scoop out the sauce with, or more of their delicious, delicious rice, but for the most part, you would have tried some of the best food that Afghani cuisine has to offer. And boy, it keeps us coming back. 

Service
The service here is impeccable. 

On our first visit, J got into a conversation with the cashier, who turned out to be his son. He's a a former pathologist working at Dandenong Hospital who gave up the slides and the microscope and surrounded himself instead with beautiful grilled meat and fragrant rice and bread at this family restaurant. Sounds like a good upgrade.

On my second visit (a year later), I made a call to reserve a table beforehand, and he remembered us through the phone. During the dinner, he brought out a bottle of home-made chili (he grew the chili himself!) and offered it to us. He warned us it was spicy, and damn, I've never tasted anything spicier. One nibble alongside the grilled chicken, and it took me out of commission until 20 minutes and a pitcher of water later. The bill came to $315 ($35/head), and he rounded down to $300 for us. 

For our third visit, two person in our party doesn't eat lamb and requested to swap for chicken instead. The owner came by and told us told us he'll just bring out the usual lamb+chicken combination, and give us two more chicken tikka on the house. Later on during the dinner, someone mistakenly asked for more brinjal (not knowing that only the rice and naan is free-flow.) We corrected her, but the owner told us he'll bring us another plate, on the house. Again! Their hospitality is astonishing, and have cemented a place in my heart.