Indian food meets Afghani

Find the Himalaya Shopping Centre and wend your way past the silk merchants and the shops selling exotic CDs.

Head up the escalator and to the left you'll find the Kabul, which has taken over the space allocated to an entire shop.

It's a spacious restaurant with comfortable chairs, dark blue tablecloths and a series of banquettes running along the wall.

The menu splits into two sections: Afghan food and Indian food.

Curiosity should compel you to try some Afghan dishes.

Portions are very large and prices very competitive.

Start with dumplings - ordering the Afghan starter called mantu gosht brings a dinner plate covered in large savoury dumplings filled with spiced lamb.

Ashak are also dumplings and come in meat and non-meat versions.

The vegetarian ones are amazingly good, light dumplings with dough so thin that you can see the green leaves of the filling through the skins.

Also notable is the showr-na-kath, a bowl full of chickpeas in a thin, green, herby, chilli-warmed liquid.

Eat them with a spoon, or more sensibly with some of the excellent Afghan nan bread.

For mains, the quabuli murgh is a large plate of delicious rice pillau made with plenty of sultanas and garnished with shreds of carrot; on top of it is a tender chicken drumstick, and it comes with a bowl of curry with a large minced-lamb cake hidden in its depths.

Another winner is the karahi tukham, which is a small karahi full of light, buttery, rich and spicy scrambled eggs.

Kabul Restaurant
The Broadway, Southall, UB1 1JY