Title: Kabana Afghani
Author: ENU

Kabana in Berkeley, CA – update, lunch
Review date: February 2013
(previous review appended below)

We ate at Kabana in August 2011. We loved the deep-flavored, gutsy food, but the tiny restaurant was definitely showing its aging and unattractive bones. Before we had the chance to return, Kabana rented a larger storefront less than a block away from the original restaurant. 

Reports were good on the new place, but we always like to wait a few months to let things settle down after an opening. The new space is handsome, at least until you get to the sole bathroom in the back. We aren't talking anything as stylish as the sophisticated décor of Khana Peena/Oakland, with its unique Kama Sutra murals and elegant dark-painted walls; but for Kabana this open, newly painted space is a huge step upwards. 

If you happen to like Indian music videos, Kabana is where you can see them, on a 45" TV set high on the back wall. It's placed so that the waitstaff can see it from where they stand at the cash register, which means most of the customers can watch (and hear) the videos as well. They're fun in an odd way, as if Beyonce suddenly went native in a skin-tight silver lurex sari, ululating a song while surrounded by dark brooding young Indian men performing dance numbers which cross Busby Berkeley with Flashdance.

After looking over the menu, we ordered two tandoori dishes – the lamb, which we were told was lamb chops with the bone, not the boneless lamb listed on the menu; and the fish. We also added the palak paneer, the fresh cheese in spinach. Everything is a la carte, so we also ordered one dish of rice, one traditional naan, and a side dish of yoghurt (it's not listed on the menu, but they have it if you ask). 

This is far from the best yoghurt. It tastes like Safeway plain non-fat yoghurt: tart to the point of sourness, held together more by gelatin than anything else, with whey leaking out of it. Kabana brings out a dish of thick-sliced cucumber and a few rings of raw red onion. I cut them up and added them to the yoghurt for an impromptu raita, which the Afghans don't use.

They do use the cilantro chutney, however, which is truly spicy and packs a great wallop, especially with the naan. It's a good thing we enjoy hot foods, because both tandooris, especially the fish, were two to three times hotter than most restaurants make them. 

Fortunately the palak paneer was mild and light, offering a good contrast. It wasn't as buttery and luscious as the saag paneer we had previously, but I thought the complex spicing of the spinach sauce was actually better in this dish than with the saag. As is traditional, the spinach had been braised for a long time, resulting in a smooth olive-green puree that makes a great gravy. 

Unless Kabana goes back to the boneless lamb cubes, we wouldn't order the lamb tandoori again. These were poorly trimmed chops from a small Australian lamb rack, with too much fat and gristle. The tandoori marinade on the lamb was good but not great, but the marinade on the fish was incendiary! 

The fish was four pieces from a small white-fleshed fish of some sort. It was as hot as I could stand, and even Carlos thought it was spicy. This was wonderful with the rice, naan, yoghurt (for me) and palak paneer. Kabana's tandoori is serious stuff, so don't order it unless you're a chilehead – or make sure to specify to the waitstaff what level of heat you want when you place your order.

We were pleased that Kabana didn't make any attempt to 'dumb down' the cooking for us, so we're inclined to give them extra points for that. That said, this is still not the best curry restaurant. The food quality seemed to have cheapened a little, and the naan was a bit burnt on the bottom. The rice was good, but not as soft as it had been on our previous visit. 

Still, Kabana ranks high above Indus Village (around the corner from Kabana, where a return visit July 2012 gave us bland, uninteresting food), and the aforementioned Khana Peena. Having a larger, nicer dining room than before is a big positive for picking Kabana for your curry fix. 

There's a lot of decent Pakistani/Indian/Afghani restaurants in the East Bay, but not many that are genuinely good. We haven't eaten at Ajanta/Albany in almost a decade, which has retained its reputation as one of the best Indian restaurants in Alameda County. We'll be hitting Ajanta one of these days to try a head-to-head comparison with Kabana.

Two people, lunch: three dishes, two chai tea (free refills), three sides, with tip was $48.

Kabana Afghani
1106 University Ave @San Pablo, Berkeley, CA
http://www.kabanarestaurant.net/menu.html 
Review date: August 2011

Years ago we had a family dinner at Kabana at my nephew’s suggestion. We liked it although we didn’t feel it was the best place we’d eaten at. We never went back, however, and with the rise of Indian chaat (pronounced “choot”) places, along with Pakistani and Himalayan restaurateurs adding their own twists to the budget-priced ethnic mix, the list is now too long for any one person or couple to try all the many places in Alameda County (Alameda, Berkeley, and Oakland are all easy for us to reach).

Carlos and I really enjoy the occasional meal of Indian-type curries. He likes Basmati rice more than I do, but we both love the naan breads and various spicy chutneys. As Inez doesn’t care much for curries and avoids spicy food, he and I often go to these types of places for lunch by ourselves when we’re out running errands.

I thought it was time to try Kabana once more. Any restaurant that has survived the heavy competition of several dozen new competitors over the past two decades deserves respect, especially these days.

It’s a small, basic space and especially with the door open, really noisy. There’s a lot of wear and tear around the edges. Like most of its brethren, it’s not going to win any awards for Sparkling Cleanliness, either.

What it does have is cooking that has held up to past standards. Nowadays, when too many other places we’ve tried recently have taken cost-cutting to unhappy lengths (from a diner’s standpoint), Kabana stands out as a place where the food is just as you remember it once being, when Americans first discovered that curry was not a one-size-fits-all sauce.

The saag paneer, long one of our favorites, excelled not only in the lovely, pillow-soft, irregular lumps of lightly browned fresh paneer, the spinach sauce was divinely enriched with generous amounts of ghee, the clarified butter beloved of this region’s cuisines. The paneer, a fresh cheese similar to farmer’s cheese, was only three or four cubes, but they were good-sized and scrumptious. 

The chicken boti was six massive chunks of tandoori chicken breast atop a sizzling platter of white onion shreds. Boti is spiced like tandoori but in kebab form, and all too often overcooked. These were firm but still juicy, and wonderful dipped in the super-hot cilantro chutney sauce that’s brought gratis to every table, with a small plate of diced cucumbers and raw red onion shreds.

Carlos ordered the special Lamb Karahi to try. It’s boneless lamb in small dice, but a generous serving compared to what we’ve gotten elsewhere recently. There’s a thick red curry gravy, cooked until the oil separates out, with whole green chiles cooked in it. It’s spicy, oily, and absolutely wonderful. 

The Basmati rice isn’t the highest quality, but it’s cooked until soft, which pleased me. Many Indian restaurants serve the rice in hard grains, which I find unpleasant. The garlic naan wasn’t terribly garlicky, but it was fresh, thin, and very lightly greased with ghee, as it should be but often isn’t.

All we were missing was our beloved yoghurt raita, but the buttery spinach gravy was so luscious in cooling down the spicier dishes, we cleaned the plates completely.

Kabana is noisy, dirty, small, and bare-bones. If you could combine the more pleasant ambiance of Indus Village or Khana Peena, people would be lining up outside their door. The food is generous and spicy, and not surprisingly they do a lot of take-out business.

Will we come back? Absolutely. The menu is relatively small, and there’s some other dishes we’d like to try. We could wish for quieter, more pleasant surroundings, but when the food is good enough and cheap to boot, we’ll put up with it. 

Three entrees, one naan, two hot chai teas, with rice and tip were a rock-bottom $38.