Cardiff . Restaurants in Wales . Uncategorized

Afghan Cuisine and Catering, City Road, Cardiff: restaurant review

On October 20, 2025 by The Plate Licked Clean

You can’t put a price on contentment, they say.

They are, of course, wrong: you can pretty much guarantee a few precious moments of the stuff at Afghan Cuisine.

Take your seat, place your order. Bread will appear. Freshly baked, doughy-crisp bread, and little pots to accompany: black olives, hummus and yoghurt trickled with rivulets of bright olive oil. Tear off still-warm pieces, dredge them through that hummus, settle back. Relax. Good things are about to happen.

It won’t appear on your bill, of course.

And not for the first time since I have made a point of talking about Cardiff’s less ‘obvious’ places to eat, I think about how other cultures and traditions know something we don’t- or have at least forgotten- about the art of hospitality.

So sit back. Watch life amble by. Have the satisfyingly rich mango lassi. From my window table I can see charity shop Islamic Relief; a barber; the (highly recommended) Castello Grill House and chicken shop ‘Perilicious’: and if that roll call isn’t City Road in a nutshell then I don’t know what is.

It is a long room, decorated with pictures of notable Afghan sites: the Blue Mosque mausoleum, the country’s first national park Band-e Amir, Kabul’s grandly named Mosque of the King of Two Swords and the towering Buddhas of Bamiyan, the former UNESCO World Heritage Site destroyed in 2001 in an act of wanton ideological spite.

From the front door you can see the grill which dominates the open kitchen. It handles much of the menu. We’ll come back to that, because very good things come from those coals.

In late afternoon, the larger tables fill with families, from grandparents to children dandled on their father’s laps. It’s lovely to see several generations eating together: this is a menu built for sharing, after all, whether it’s the chapli kebab ‘Family Deal’, the choice of lamb or chicken karahis for up to four people, or the sharing grills.

The night before my third visit they had served a whole lamb, steamed and roasted, and if you can picture that spanning the table, served on a mound of kabuli rice studded with raisins and sugar-glazed carrots, and it doesn’t do something to you, it may already be too late for you. With twenty-four hours notice it can be yours, too, for £329.99.

Those chapli are impressive, too. I’ve been eating them for years, since kind families in Grangetown would send boxes and boxes of them (and samosas and chapatis and koftes and much more) into work, in a gesture of unnecessary but much-appreciated kindness. When people with little in the way of material wealth make the effort to cook for you? That’s humbling.

Never, though, have I had them done with such a light touch. Fried in a huge steep-sided cast iron skillet until there’s the merest suggestion of a crust to these patties, and with a lavishly juicy, fatty interior to the mutton, tomato, onion and spice mix, these are arrestingly good.

When I return, a few days later, I drag along one of the city’s most respected chefs. I take a bite, then another, and push the plate across to him. ‘Tell me that isn’t as good as I think it is’.

Afghan Cuisine feels like somewhere to come and eat in an unhurried way, and almost four hours pass before we realise it. There’s more- much more- of that bread, an entire uncut naan, hot and crisp, and much more of that eye-catching grill work. Lamb tikka, expertly done, comes with a herby salad bristling with green birdseye chillies, and lamb chops are fabulously tender and unabashedly fatty.

I have a dumpling fixation. (“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: I have hunted down pierogi and baozi and wontons and siu mai and kinkali and har gow and momo with greed in my heart…”) Mantu- steamed, with a delicately seasoned lamb and onion filling- don’t last long.

There’s a short wait as they are made to order, and a far less leisurely demolition at the table. Twice. Doused in chickpeas and a yoghurt lightly flavoured with garlic and dried mint, they’re an obvious order, even for non-obsessives, and not seen elsewhere locally.

I would love to tell you I lingered over them, savouring the rarity of the opportunity. I’d be lying.

Lamb dopiaza is very different from the more familiar Indian version: there is plenty of that rich, long-braised sweetness from the onions, but the Afghan version is more of a mellow stew, the pieces braised into something memorable. (I finish it a couple of days later, standing up at the sink late at night after a hectic night in the Market, and that aromatic turmeric-yellow oil has soaked into the bread. In that moment, it is perfect).

Chicken wings are a treat, char-striped and spice-stained a vivid red, the meat sweet and delicate, and that raita has plenty of lurking green chilli heat.

A dusting of sumac- tart, citrusy, smoky- means they are best eaten with your hands. You need the impact. Besides, if you eat lamb chops with a knife and fork in a place like this, you belong on some sort of register, so get to work and take a toothpick. A punchily spiced chicken biryani isn’t boneless as the menu says, but all the better for it, and the sort of thing you’ll keep coming back to.

Three visits in five days probably tells you what you need to know. Afghan Cuisine is not only a foothold in Cardiff for a little-represented tradition, but somewhere which stands above many of its neighbours on City Road. There’s heart here, and a quiet pride, and no little skill.  And, luckily, I get to tell thousands of you about it. Sometimes, this reviewing lark is a very simple thing.

75 City Rd, Cardiff CF24 3BL