Famous food across Afghanistan, city by city

Herat

Navid Restaurant, west of Taraqi Park at the start of Arbab-zada Road, has served Herat for about twenty years: kebab, palaw and biryani, and pizza for the children.

Herat's winter dish is kichiri with landi: soft rice cooked with mung beans, served with dried meat or yogurt. The restaurant Heratis name for it is Bacha Malang's, in the old city near Chahar Su. Herat also makes ghulur torsh, a sour winter dish, and sweets such as halwa sohan.

Above all, Herat grows saffron. Its saffron is ranked among the best in the world year after year, and tens of thousands of women work in the harvest each autumn.

Photo: Mohammad Amiri

Out of town on the Kandahar road, Qaqnoos has been a garden restaurant with daybeds, known for chalaw kebab and dogh, the salted yogurt drink. We could not confirm a recent visit; ask in the city.

Mazar-i-Sharif

Mazar loves its Kabuli palaw. Travellers in 2024 and 2025 ate at:

• The city's oldest kebab house, listed on maps as Kababi (mashhoortarin kabab), with separate rooms for men and families: a skewer for about 150 afghanis.
• Mansour Restaurant, for Kabuli palaw with free tea, about 300 afghanis.
• Bilal Restaurant, for traditional dishes.
• A busy juice and ice cream centre for sheer yakh and fresh juice.

Look out for ashlaki, a Turkmen dish: a large flat pastry filled with meat and fried in ghee. And take home sheer pira, cardamom milk fudge, and sesame halwa, which visitors to Mazar buy as gifts.

Kandahar

Kandahar is pomegranate country. The province harvests some 270,000 tonnes in a good year and sends them abroad, and in the city you can drink the juice fresh from street stalls. Its grapes and raisins, from Arghandab, Panjwai, Daman and Dand, are just as famous.

Photo: Tal Surasky

Travellers in 2025 recommended Andkhoy Turkmen Daryai Restaurant No. 2, cheap and friendly, and Anar Restaurant next door, a large place with a family floor upstairs.

Jalalabad

Jalalabad is the home of chapli kebab, a flat patty of spiced minced meat. The most famous is at Adam Khan Chapli Kabab on the Jalalabad to Kunar road, where the kebabs are the size of a plate and fried in fat, sometimes with egg or cheese. It was a favourite of visitors in 2025.

Photo: Miansari66 · Public domain

Nangarhar's warm valleys grow bitter oranges (narenj) and sugarcane, and Kama district, east of the city, is known for its hand-churned sheer yakh.

Bamyan

We found no Bamyan restaurant we could confirm, but plenty to eat. Bamyan's potatoes are among the country's most famous crops, and in town you will find potato bolani on the main street. Along the roads, women sell yogurt, butter, buttermilk and qurut, the dried salty curd balls that go into ashak and mantu sauces all over the country.

Kunduz

Kunduz grows more rice than any other province, about 116,000 tonnes in 2025, and its watermelons reach Kabul's markets every July. In winter, Kunduz and Badakhshan eat landi, dried salted meat, in soups or with kichiri.

Ghazni

Ghazni's vineyards, especially in Gilan district, grow some of the country's best grapes, about half a million tonnes in 2026, and it is one of the great growers of apricots and almonds, much of it dried for export.

Panjshir

Panjshir's own fruit is the mulberry (toot), celebrated each summer with a mulberry festival in Bazarak. Dried mulberries pounded with walnuts make talkhan, a traditional mountain food. In Bazarak's roadside restaurants, a plate of Kabuli palaw with beans cost about 160 afghanis in 2025.

Photo: Hamidzada Photography

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