Review: Afghan Grill

At Afghan Grill, the fortunes of war pay delicious dividends

Comments (0) By Mark Stuertz Friday, Mar 7 2008

There are salads too. Crispy shrimp, marinated in lime, garlic and ginger before it's wrapped in sheets of rice paper and pan-fried, crowns a heap of greens drizzled with yogurt dressing. Panir salad is a plated spread of feta cheese cubes, tomato wedges and chopped greens splashed with mint vinaigrette.

At lunch there is a buffet table, a row of steel chafing dishes with white napkins twined around the handles and blue Sterno tickling the bottoms. The lids are askew so that a small corner reveals the contents: meatballs, mattoo, aushak and saffron rice wafting that sweet raisin smell. There are drumsticks with the bulk of the meat scraped from the leg bone shaft, the rest of it pushed down to the knuckles so that all of the fat and skin and gristle bunch up with the meat scraps into dumbbell ends. Piktar says the meat was stripped because it was overcooked and dried. He left these remains to be picked over—an odd sort of buffet table shoddiness. The table ends in a plate of thick, gooey baklava.

tom jenkins

Matt Pikar (second from left) brings authentic, delicious Afghan dishes to North Texas.

Location Info

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Afghan Grill

17370 Preston Road
Dallas, TX 75252

Category: Restaurant > Middle Eastern

Region: Richardson & Vicinity

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Details

Steamed meat dumplings $5.50
Crispy shrimp $6.50
Panir salad $5.50
Chicken kebab $15
Beef kebab $15
Combination kebab $19.50
Simmer spinach (lamb) $14.50
Baklava $4

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But Piktar stakes his menu on kebabs. You see men stabbing the spike into their plates—spikes stacked tightly with meat and shriveled plum tomatoes, with green bell peppers with just the slightest bit of edge curled and charred, with onion shavings still juicy crisp even as they reek and taste of smoke. They work forks like plungers down the skewers to scrape them clean. Pikar got his two-months' rent's worth.

19177 Preston Road at the George Bush Turnpike, 972-818-0300. Open 11 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-10 p.m. Monday-Friday, 12-10 p.m. Saturday, 12-9 p.m. Sunday. $$