A friend and I headed to Koochi Afghan Cafe in Gungahlin on a Sunday to try out their Afghani Bedouin breakfast (a Livingsocial deal I’d purchased). I had to wiki ‘Bedouin’ which translates in Arabic to mean nomad or wanderer. Not really knowing what Afghani food was like, I was very curious in trying this place out.
The Bedouin breakfast included black or green cardamom tea with dried fruits and nuts, and an omelette served with Afghani bread. My friend and I both loved the green cardamom tea. The cardamom was subtle and provided just a light bit of spice to the tea. The waiter also mentioned this was their best selling tea.
The omelette was tasty and filled with onion, tomato and chives. The waiter informed us that the Afghani bread was made differently to other breads and used different spices. You may be able to see in the photo that the bread has these small ridges/bumps lengthways so I could pull apart the bread easily into little strips. I wonder how they make it like that? I thought the bread was nice with the olive and tomato mix on top (it’s a bit bland and dry alone).
I was very interested and pleased to see the assortment of traditional pastries on the menu. I really wanted to try the ‘halawet el jebn’ (cheese dough wrapped around cream with pistachios and sugar syrup) but they didn’t have any of the pastry items available except for the baklava or jelabi. I chose the jelabi ($3.50) – this was like a deep fried batter crisp covered in golden syrup served cold. Very sweet and really just like eating crunchy batter on its own.
Koochi’s lunch/dinner menu looks fantastic. We both agreed that we must go back to try out other items such as their traditional Afghani rice topped with carrot, barberries and almonds, kofta korma and other tasty meat dishes. A plus is that half the items on the menu are gluten-free. Service was very friendly here and I’m eager to come back for lunch and more green cardamom tea.
