About De Afghanan Cuisine and reviews

Afghani cuisine is noted for its succulent kabobs. Kabob-e-Gousfand is a lean cut of lamb marinated in special De Afghanan spices and seasoning, served with bread and seasoned brown or white rice. Other authentic dishses included Qabili Palu, lamb covered with brown seasones basmati rice and topeed with chopped carrots and raisins, and manto, a pastry shell with onion and beef filling and topped with curried vegetables.

LOCATIONS

  • FREMONT, CA 94536 (MAIN LOC.)

    37395 Fremont Blvd.

    Hours: 12:00pm - 10:00pm 

    Closed on Mondays 
    Phone: 510.857.1009


  • FREMONT, CA 94536

    37405 Fremont Blvd..

    Hours: 12:00pm - 10:00pm 

    Closed on Mondays 
    Phone: 510.745.9599


    BERKELEY, CA 94702

    1160 University Avenue

    Hours: 12:00pm - 10:00pm 

    Closed on Mondays 
    Phone: 510.549.3781


    LIVERMORE, CA 94550

    1550 Railroad Avenue

    Hours: 12:00pm - 10:00pm 

    Closed on Mondays 
    Phone: 925.371.1113

Reviews:

 

Alejandra A.

I thought I had tried good afghan food in the area, until I came here! The seasoning on all of the meats is incredible, all meats are cooked to perfection and extremely tender. Not a single one is over cooked even though each meat needs to be cooked differently. There is a unique yet bold flavor with each of the meats I tried.I ordered the white rice plate with chicken, lamb, and beef. The rice is fully cooked and extremely fluffy, as opposed to other locations that sometimes slightly under cook it to give you a different texture.Bolani: this is absolutely packed with filling and flavor. I've been to other Afghan restaurants and the bolani tastes good, but it is very thin and doesn't have much filling. This bolani is extremely crispy on the outside and the feeling is so seasoned. I ordered half potato half leek and combined with the chutney, it's probably some of the best bolani I've had in the area.Con: the service. Our server forgot we placed an order and when paying the bill, they tried to charge us an extra for two lamb dishes we never ordered.


 

Benz H. B.

UPDATE: Haven't been here in a long time due to them having the worst customer service ever! Came in today at 3pm to eat in because I was craving it. The two servers we had acted like they were new to this job and that they didn't understand English or Dari??  I had to ask for menus after 10min of her seating us and she laughed as I asked for them (they had two tables that were already eating, so can't say it was because they were busy) We ordered appetizers and main course. We get our main course and then appetizers after, again she laughed at us when we asked for it During the entire time we were there it was super hot inside and about 85 degrees outside. They have no working AC inside the place so the door was open with a fan outside, which is fine, but while we are eating they closed the door and shut the fan off. We basically ate our food like we were sitting in a sauna. The two servers never came back to ask us if we needed anything or if everything was ok, etc. you know like normal decent servers do‍ With all the money the owners make and having numerous locations, you can't afford decent AC and train your staff?? This isn't free food you're giving out! We pay for the food you provide and service, but this is inexcusable. I've been a server for 15yrs at Afghan restaurants and American, and let me say I gave the best service to my customers... ALWAYS! Like I said I come once every few years, but after today I am totally done! It's embarrassing.


 

Amanda T.

Food is delicous! Service, unfortunately, is lacking. They should probably hire one more wait staff as there were only two ladies working the floor. It is very hard to flag down one of the waitresses, and when you do, they forget to deliver what you ask. For instance, I had to ask for water, menus, and naan bread twice! Our dishes also took 30+ minutes for them to come out and that is added to the 20 minutes it took for the waitresses to take our order after we were ready. On the brighter side, my beef and chicken kebab dish was delicious! I'm not sure if it was because I was starving or because it was actually very good (could be both). The beef and chicken were both nicely grilled and well seasoned. It was nicely complimented by the warm basmati rice. I would like to eat here again, but next time I'll just order to-go.


 

Justin N.

One of the worst restaurant I've been to. I went to this restaurant this past father's day to celebrate. I arrived at this place around 1:30pm and was given a number, which is expected. 20 minutes passed by and we were seated. The waitress there handed us our menus and had us sit there waiting another 20 minutes as she goes in and out of the kitchen. At that point I was kinda weirded out by her actions because she completely avoided my table. Although she apologized for the wait, her grumpy attitude made it sound like she was over it. She took our orders and had us waiting another 30 minutes before she brought out some complimentary naan. Mind you that she just brought out a basket of bread. No plates to share, nothing. Just a basket of cold bread. At this point I was not happy with the service at all. After the naan was put on our table, we had to wait another 45 more minutes for our main dishes to come out. We should have honestly just walked up and leave at that point. When the food came out I was very disappointed by by how long it took to put a scoop of rice, a scoop of salad and a couple cubes of meat on the plate. As soon as the waitress placed the plates on our table she left so fast she didn't even hear us asking for extra plates to share since she didn't even give us plates in the beginning; we had to go grab the plates ourselves. The total wait time from arrival to the time we received our food was well over 1.5 hours; just to make three dishes. Overall, bad service, poor professionalism, negative experience, mediocre food.


 

Lynn C.

I love the food here. Portions are huge.  Everything tastes so fresh and delicious.  My favorite is the bolani it's made fresh daily and you can taste the fresh potato they use. The kabobs are delicious can't go wrong with either chicken, beef or lamb. If you love lamb, I will highly suggest to eat the lamb or give it a try at least very tender and flavorful. Yum! I still yet have to try their desserts, but always too full to try the sweets. Must have next time.


 

Jeffrey T.

My wife came once before and said the food was good. She brought me in to try it, and when we walked in we were not greeted. It was busy so we thought nothing of it. After several minutes of the waitresses walking by and not acknowledging us we decided to leave. It seemed as if its what they were hoping for.


 

Tiffany T.

This is honestly my favorite spot in Fremont to get Afghan food. It's always busy, which means this place must be good, right?! My go to order is the combination kabob that comes with chicken, beef, and chapli. SO YUMMY!!! The wait for the food always takes long but I think it's cause there's usually one person making the food. Service could use room for improvement. Anyway, I highly recommend this place if you're craving some delicious, fresh Afghan food.


 

Bessai P.

The best Afghan restaurant / Kabob in America hands down.. you must try their beef kabob and bolani. I've been going to this place since 90's.  I live in Orange County but whenever I go to Francisco I always eat there.


 

Tiffany J.

Decor can't be beat, fresh-made potato bolani is great, service is so warming, lamb kebabs are fantastic (better than the ground beef kebab), and the pistachio dessert is worth a try! The owner is very kind; thank him or talk to him--I think it'll make both of your days. Always happy to dine at a place with a happy chef.Expect a wait, though.


 

Pat U.

My first time visit.  I will definitely return.  Service was excellent and attentive. Lamb was wonderfully presented and prepared.  Order a number of dishes and share...go early, it gets very busy on a Thursday evening.


 

Kay S.

This is one of my favorite restaurants in all of Fremont and I don't understand how I missed giving a review until now. To be fair the bar for Fremont is not very high, but plenty of people come to this restaurant from much farther places because it is definitely probably one of the best restaurants in all of the bay area. Have you had Afghan food before? Honestly Afghan food is delicious, and if you're going to have it for the first time you're going to want to come here.The restaurant is not very large so it can get packed pretty quickly. The interior is adorable, and it's a nice place to eat with family, friends, whatever the occasion. They have a fireplace on the inside that I've heard sometimes they turn on, but I've never seen. It would add for a really nice touch. As for their food, everything I've ever tried has been excellent. My personal favorite is the chapli kebab that's made of ground beef. The rice is off-the-wall good. I also love the mantu and bolani. Their ice cream is enormous. The photo attached is of just a single serving large bowl. We split it between 3 people. I dinged one star because I think that they have a lovely exterior to be able to use as an outdoor area and for some reason they use it as a storage area instead. This is Fremont so the weather is typically good enough for you to eat outside. They have the decorations and chairs that indicate that at some point this was something they used the exterior for, but not anymore. It sucks because it's so cute! I would totally wait longer on a warm day to eat outside rather than inside. I'm writing this in hopes that the management decided to clean that outdoor area up and let people eat there. I'm guessing it also has to do with how reserve the inside is from the outside. Sometimes you can't even tell the restaurant is open because the big door on the front just isolates everything inside from the outside.


 

Suvadeep B.

This is a good place to try out Afghan cuisine. The restaurant is located on the Fremont Boulevard. There is some parking spots in the back of the restaurant but those were full so ended up parking in the neighboring street. On weekend nights the wait time is quite a while (15-20 minutes).As appetizers, we tried the baba ghanoush that come with pita bread pieces with it. The plate is cooked to perfection and is one of the best that I have tried out in other Persian/Afghan restaurants. For entrees, we ordered the Afghan specialty Chapli kabob and the Shani kabob. The Chapli kabob is an Afghan delicacy that is not found in other Mediterranenan and Persian cuisines. It's a flat kabob piece, unlike the long slender kabob piece or the small chunky pieces, of minced meat along with lots of spices. The Chapli kabob is the prime attraction of this place and I thoroughly liked it. The Shami kabob was good but I have had much better beef kabob elsewhere so I wouldn't care to recommend this or come back for more. For dessert, we tried the Firni and it was quite delicious, particularly the taste of pistachio was quite refreshing. Overall, this is a good place to try out Afghan cuisine and we may come back for more later.


 

Kim R.

The best lamb I have ever tasted. I went a month ago and I still think about that lamb. The place is well known and crowded. The staff is kind and do their best to hustle in a packed environment.


 

Abby W.

My father always refuses to come here because he's a stickler for good ventilation and at De Afghanan...let's just say the kitchen is kind of...open concept? Dad wasn't able to join us for dinner so we immediately jumped at the opportunity to come.Rating Breakdown:1.5/2 Stars for Taste --Our favorite thing here is the sabzi. I mean, yes, we're a bunch of basics, but something about the deep umami flavor of that spinach-- I'll eat it with rice, I'll eat it with bread, I'll eat it with a spoon and then lick my plate clean too. We also had a half-order of the bolani with potatoes. What's not to like about carbs wrapped in carbs, smothered in yogurt and cilantro chutney? My mom's favorite is the qabili chalow (lamb shank in rice with raisins and carrots). There's just something so satisfying about unearthing this giant chunk of juicy, tender meat on the bone underneath a mountain of rice. We also ordered a combination kabob platter with chicken and beef, which we all decided we frankly could have done without. The chicken was a little dry, but overall everything was well seasoned. 0.5/1 Stars for Value --Why do I feel like the portion sizes are getting smaller and smaller? I am perfectly happy paying for the lamb shank platter but the kabob skewers looked comically small on the platter. You'll easily spend per person here.0.5/1 Stars for Customer Service --I feel like this is a family-run operation, with grandma/mom in the back working the griddle and the younger generations running the front. The young lady was probably just starting, but it was almost painful to watch how inefficient she was -- bringing one bill at a time to each table after multiple attempts/reminders from various tables. The food also took longer than normal to come out so there was a lot of sitting around, looking over at other parties who were doing the same.Bonus star because this will still be my go-to place  when I'm craving Afghan (not including my friend's house, her food is my #1 forever and ever, amen), but I'm going to skip the kabobs next time.TL;DR -- Split a bolani (potatoes over leek and you can always get a half-order), get the sabzi and the lamb shank!====For food pics, check out @noshameadventures on IG!


 

Derek S.

Came by for dinner the other night and it was excellent! Started off with the half order mantu and it was fresh and tasty hot out of the oven! The leeks were fresh and the bread was light and fluffy! The half order was more than enough!The Bolani was also excellent with super thin wrapper, fresh and flavorful ground beef topped with some delicious yogurt! Main course was the lamb, beef, and beef Patty combo that was world class! The lamb was world class flavorful, juicy, and super tender! The spicy beef Patty was also excellent too! Their "brown" rice was super fragrant!/head after tax and gratuity for dinner. Street parking in the back along with a tight parking lot next to the restaurant!


 

Joanne J.

Went on a Sunday mid-afternoon and it was not very busy at all. Was seated right away. Usually I find kabobs very mediocre when I eat them, but this place had such juicy flavorful chicken and beef kabobs. The meat was not chewy, but soft and melted right in your mouth. The food did take a little longer than expected, but it was so worth the wait.We also ordered the potato bolani which was so good with the cilantro chutney. Highly recommend- its a hidden gem.


 

Zara Z.

I usually do not leave bad reviews, I want to always support my own people. But what this restaurant did was unbelievable. We took about 20 people to the restaurant arriving at 5pm, put in our order right away. Our appetizers came pretty quick but we waited almost two hours for our food. Every time we asked one of the girls why our food hadn't come, they  would say "sorry it's coming" after another Half hour we became impatient and went to ask again. We had many people and kids who were really hungry. The girl we approached was so rude I couldn't believe it. She told us they lost our order and have no idea what we ordered. So in the 2 hours we were sitting there, not one person told us they lost our order, and when we confronted them, instead of apologizing they started to yell and give us attitude. I have no idea how these girls still have a job. They are the rudest employees I have come across. We walked out without having a meal. When we went to talk to the owner about his employees he didn't care at all. Unbelievably disappointed in their service and will never return again.


 

Raman S.

They make the best Afghan lamb kebabs and Afghan flat bread (bolani with potato filling) the two of my favorite Afghan dishes. They are very popular in central Fremont. You have to get there early to get a spot. Their vegetarian dishes like roasted egg plant in tomato sauce and yogurt is very popular and good.They could improve on their ventilation and parking situation. The food here is delicious and very well priced and I would highly recommend this spot for Afghan cuisine in Fremont.


 

Carly B.

Our first time trying this place, we found the food pretty good bordering on delicious for some dishes, but the service was absolutely terrible.There's no front area with a table or hostess so you have to wave down a waitress in the middle of them rushing around tables. Luckily they do have those buzzer things so you know your place in line is legit. This place was already super busy at 6 on a Sunday and when we left at 8 it was even more packed with waiting hungry people.We were seated after about a 20-25 minute wait. This is where everything got disorganized. We ordered food and then a different waitress came by to give us menus again to order. We were then brought only 1 water and eventually the 4 we asked for. Then we found out they were out of some of what we ordered so we had to reorder. Finally got our food and then the only annoying thing was we kept running out of water during the meal and no one was checking on us to refill it.Chicken and Beef Combo - the chicken was absolutely delicious. Super juicy and flavorful. The beef had nice seasoning but it was very chewy and fatty. They give you a massive amount of rice with this dish and it was ok but bland. I felt like it was to make up for the small portion of meat.Free Bread - they serve this with the main meals and it was hard within 2 minutes and inedible.Pasta Appetizer - very weird, it was the texture of a potsticker or dumpling but with different flavors. Not bad but not amazing either.


 

Aliyah H.

I was there a few days ago. Food is alright but when the owner came to take my order, he told me "You need to hurry up and order, I have a table with 20 people that I need to serve." First of all, you had 3 other waiters taking orders. Second, you barely even gave me a minute to open my mouth and tell you what my order was before rushing me. Third, I guess you become cocky and arrogant when you open multiple locations of white washed afghan food. ‍