It was Morten’s turn to call the shots for Dinner Club this month and he would’ve chosen Be’Wiched Cafe in Surrey but it turns out they’re not open on weekends. Since we’ve never gone to Surrey for Dinner Club, he decided to Google a Surrey restaurant and chose Afghan Chopan Restaurant as his plan B. It was a good plan B.
First, a word of warning for those that rely on a GPS to get around: If you enter the address for Afghan Chopan Restaurant, your GPS may think it’s smarter than you and automatically change that address to something on 60th Avenue on the other side of town. Check first before driving. Our GPS did that and we ended up arriving a half hour late.
Afghan Chopan Restaurant
Kenny, Ann and Phil were put in the pen for a “time out”
Something must’ve gone down while Morten, Ang and I were making our way to the restaurant because when we arrived, Kenny, Ann and Phil were separated from the rest of the restaurant in an elevated pen. It looks like something you’d put kindergarten kids in when they need a “time out.” Haha
They had already ordered one of each of the appetizers, but the food didn’t make an appearance for another half hour after we arrived. If this was some sort of tactic to starve us just long enough to make anything taste great, it worked. The Bolani (pastry stuffed with potatoes), Mantu (steamed dough filled with ground beef, onions and spices) and Ashak (steamed dough filled with leeks, minced meat and yogurt) were all yummers! The Bolani reminded us of crispy green onion pancakes with a potato twist, but the Ashak was the winner of the three when it came to flavour. The Mantu and Ashak were actually quite similar, but eating the Mantu reminded both Ang and I of eating something almost Italian. You could taste the leeks in the Ashak as well as the spices and what we suspected must’ve been some other type of vegetable in there.
Meat Kebabs
We asked our server if the Family Combo would be enough for six people and he said it would be, so that’s what we ordered. It was just right! The combo comes with rice (with raisins, carrots and chutney), tekka kabab, chicken skewers, shami skewers, and three vegetable dishes including a potato dish, green bean dish, and cauliflower dish. I’m normally not a huge fan of rice, but with raisins and hidden meat pieces I was a happy camper. It reminded me a bit of Russian plov. The potato dish was the only one that wasn’t finished and it wasn’t because it wasn’t good — it just wasn’t anything special. Very potato-y. The green beans were a good side dish (also nothing crazy going on here), but the curry cauliflower dish was unusually tasty. We didn’t know how to describe it.
And then the meat arrived. Omigoodness, I had an OMIGOODNESS moment!! I tried the beef first and thought it was really good. But then I tried the chicken and was blown away! I have *NEVER* had chicken this moist and tender before. We were all seriously impressed and my first thought was “this can’t be chicken.” I don’t know what they did to that chicken, but I actually wondered whether they had served us some new and improved artificially constructed meat product (for real). SO GOOD!!
For dessert, we ordered Ferneys (milk pudding stirred with vermicilli, almonds, pistachio and sugar) and I really didn’t have high hopes for a pudding with vermicilli. I was wrong. It was delicious. Sidenote though: we had ordered a few Ferneys to share but some were colder than others and the coldest ones tasted better.
Afghan Chopan Restaurant: 6 out of 6
Overall Group Food Rating: 6 out of 6 (a no brainer!)
The Good: The meat kababs are to die for!
The Bad: The wait times can be a little crazy and sitting on the hard floor didn’t help. By the way, this seating is optional — most tables at the restaurant have normal seating arrangements but Ang wanted to embarrass us by reserving the platform pen.
The Ugly: The outside signage. It looks like the type of sign you’d put outside of a discount hardware store and I wouldn’t have eaten there based on that sign alone. The website is also pretty terrible. It’s a flash site with annoying dings and flipping noises.
I enjoyed my apparently lukewarm ferney.