Balkh Shish Kabab House is a perfect kind of New York restaurant — samrussek writes
Mohammad Nasim and Abdul Jabeer opened Balkh Shish Kabab House in 1997. Now their daughters, pictured, are frequent visitors. Photo: Janice Chung On a brisk day in late October, Mohammad Nasim and Abdul Jabeer are inside their Astoria restaurant, Balkh Shish Kabab House, chatting with customers and switching from Farsi to Pashto in conversation as many Afghan people do.
The thing to eat at Balkh has also been the same since 1997: kabli palow, a traditional dish of basmati rice baked with cumin seeds, carrots, and raisins before it’s topped with a massive slow-cooked lamb shank. It’s Nasim’s favorite dish, one he remembers watching his mother prepare at home, where he first learned to cook for himself. “Afghans, all the time, three times a day, they cook at home,” he says.
Nasim, left, and Jabeer outside their restaurant. Photo: Janice Chung At the same time, Jabeer moved to New York from Balkh — the namesake of the duo’s future restaurant — a city near the Afghan border with Uzbekistan, about 100 miles west of Kunduz.
Nasim stopped working at the chicken restaurant, tired of the rowdy nighttime crowds, and moved from Brooklyn to Queens to be closer to the cooking he missed. Eventually, he and Jabeer met and began to talk about starting a restaurant together, something for families, where the pair could showcase the food they grew up on.Kababs cooking on the grill.Manto, traditional beef dumplings, became a specialty of Jabeer’s when he was a street vendor in Afghanistan.