Who
Zara’s Afghan Cuisine
Where
120 N Walnut Creek Dr, Mansfield, 682-518-3668
Vibe Playful and bright strip-mall storefront with comfortable booths and lunch buffet
The Food of Many Flags Zara’s serves a welcome introduction to Afghan cuisine BY IAN CONNALLY PHOTOS BY TWIG CAPRA
would turn out that I did know something about this food after all. It shouldn’t have surprised me. On the drive to Zara’s Afghan Afghanistan was central to the Silk Road Cuisine, a relatively new addiroutes that linked Asia and Europe for centuries. It became a center of wealth tion to Mansfield’s expanding due to this trade, and its cuisine reflects landscape of non-chain restauthat commerce. Reading the menu, rants, I had a few minutes to I found influences from India in the consider what exactly I knew kormas, tandoori, and masala alongside about Afghan cuisine. Generally, recognizably Mediterranean offerings Afghanistan comes up in my reading like hummus, baba ghanoush, and and discussions because of geo-politics, kabob. Central Asia was there, too, in the war, and the devastation wrought by mantu, steamed dumplings stuffed with 150 years of aspiring imperial powers savory ground beef, brightened with cocompeting for position in the region. It’s riander and topped with fiercely garlicky a history that has long kept the once-viyogurt sauce. brant nation wedged between Pakistan But what, I asked our host, would and Iran off the list of popular tourist exemplify Afghan food? Come for the destinations and, as a result, Afghan food buffet and try a little of everything, off the radar of most diners who don’t he suggested, but failing that, chicken live in cities with a large Afghan commu- tikka kabob on pilau rice with naan. We nity. In short, I knew nothing. should order a vegetable dish, too, he ofAs I sat in a buoyant red-leatherette fered. Maybe banjan borani –– fried eggbooth in Zara’s airy strip-mall storefront, plant in masala sauce –– and some bolani the wafts of cumin, turmeric, and chargandana, a platter-sized grilled flatbread grilled meats coming from the kitchen stuffed with leeks and chives. To finish, evoked the tandoori baklava. There to houses of my childlearn, I followed his hood in the south of guidance. England. Looking At first glance, over the beverage the flatbread resemmenu, I noticed bled Indian paratha. hot black tea was Thin, crisp-grilled on offer, and, never dough enveloped one to avoid living sweet, tender leeks up to a stereotype, and a mix of chive, Zara’s baklava I ordered a cup. garlic, and cilantro. cradles a filling Dipped in the gar“Calvin & Hobbes” of walnuts and comic strips, another lic-yogurt sauce that dried fruit. staple of my youth, is seemingly served decorated the table. Don’t-Miss Dishes with everything at Confusingly, in a Zara’s, this was a Mantu, chicken tikka kabob, space where I could satisfying, savory baklava have felt like a appetizer, rich and stranger, I felt right Entree Prices bright. The kabobs, at home. Perhaps it $9.95-$16.95 tandoori-red cubes was the service: hosof chicken breast pitable, inviting, and When marinated in a spice warm. Or perhaps it 11am-2:30pm, 6pm-9pm daily blend anchored by
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Zara’s beef kabob is a perfect iteration of the ways Afghan cuisine has absorbed and assimilated the flavors and techniques that surround it.
cumin, sat on a bed of my new favorite rice. Long-grained like basmati, it was crisp and brown with a sweet spice reminiscent of garam masala. This was clearly not Indian food: The spice blends were more reserved, sweeter, more savory than spicy, but it was definitely related –– a perfect iteration of the ways Afghan cuisine has absorbed and assimilated the flavors and techniques that surround it. Zara’s baklava is also familiar yet new. Like the better-known Middle-East-
ern versions, ethereally flaky phyllo layers with syrup –– here, not cloyingly sweet, but refined, allowing the dough and filling to shine –– and cradles a filling of walnuts and dried fruit. It was the introduction to Afghanistan I needed –– that we all need –– not as a contested landscape viewed through the lens of a century of invasions but as a home, a place rich and vibrant, with a cuisine that reflects a history steeped in the cultures of South and Central Asia.
May 2019
