Bamiyan Afghani Restaurant

by | Food, Tools & Skills for Living

After the waterfall we had to decide what to do for dinner. I would have loved to try the Salish Lodge; we stopped and checked out the menu, but frankly I was not inspired. When plates start at $23, the description on the menu should make my mouth water. We decided to head towards Issaquah instead.

Gillman village is a cute little shopping center in Issaquah comprised of a grouping of cottages on a boardwalk. The shops are cutesy and charming, ranging from toy stores, to yarn shops to kitchen gadgets – there is also an Amish furniture store that made me want to refurnish the whole house.

Gillman village also has an assortment a restaurants, but the only one we have ever tried is Bamiyan Afghani Restaurant, because how could you pass that up?

Bamiyan was originally just an Afghan restaurant, but we noticed that they’ve added more traditional Persian dishes as well (Persian food and Afghan food are very similar). We started with the Ausht, which was an amazing creamy and savory soup – very rich. Then Mr. H had the koobideh which is one of our all time favorite dishes. Koobideh is a savory ground beef kebab, the kind of savory where it’s difficult to stop eating even when you’re completely stuffed. I had the fesenjan. Fesenjan is one of those dishes that lives on a continuum, in this case between sweet and tart. The placement on that continuum depends largely on family recipe and geographic origin of that recipe. I asked the server how tart the fesenjan was and she claimed it was not too tart. Fesenjan is a dish of stewed chicken in a walnut and pomegranate gravy. The tartness of the dish depends on the amount of pomegranate juice used. It turned out a little more tart than I expected, but I like it really quite sweet. Nonetheless it was very good.

For desert, Mr. H had the Firni (custard with cardamom and pistachios). I went with the Bastani which is ice cream made with rosewater and pistachios (we served this at our wedding with the cake). To top it all off I got to watch Mr. H rap with the staff in Farsi which always turns me on.

Yummy, yummy, yummy, I love this place.

Bamiyan Afghani Restaurant on Urbanspoon

Judy Schwartz Haley

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