Afghan Sufra ~ Afghani - Lakemba

We usually head out to Merrylands whenever we feel like an Afghani feed, which is often. We love Merrylands but its quite a trek from our pretentious innerwest bubble. So we are thrilled to find Sufra Afghani in Haldon Street Lakemba, one of the Sydney's best and most underappreciated food strips.

Sufra is a takeaway joint and restaurant with half a dozen big tables and super smiley service. Out the back there's a bunch of master bakers and grillers doing their thing, and they do it so well.

Mix kebab - $18. Skewers of chicken, lamb and rissole, with Afghani bread. The kebabs are top notch, almost as good as our beloved Kebab Al Hojat, and a lot closer to home. On the side are small dishes of plain yoghurt and a runny green chilli chutney.

The Afghani bread is worth the visit alone, it's made to order and served hot from the oven. Yes, it's just as good as Kebab Al Hojat, plus there's sweet and savoury variations which we haven't seen elsewhere, we plan to try them soon.

For us, the ultimate joy in Afghani food is simply wrapping up a piece of perfectly grilled meat in a perfectly cooked, one minute old bread. Oh. My. God. Better than any hamburger we've ever had. No sauce required.

Lamb yakhni - $12. A lovely watery stew, perfect for bread dunking. There's a selection of similar dishes in the bainmarie-of-love, and a couple of rice dishes that look like biryani.

Qabuli palaw - $16. Slow cooked lamb on the bone, super tender and gentle in flavour, it goes perfectly the long grain rice with grated carrot and sultanas. Plus a wee serve of a sort chickpea curry. It comes with Afgani bread, it's a huge feed. We took half home for dinner and it is amazing cold with the lamb shredded through, quite sweet in a good way, it would make a shooshy side dish at your next BBQ.

Afghan Sufra is at 122 Haldon Street, Lakemba.

After a feed we recommend dropping into Toko 45 (106A Haldon St), it's  a little Indonesian convenience store that has a whole bunch of ready cooked meals for around eight bucks each on a table at the back. We grabbed a few, took them home, steamed up a pile of veggies to go along with it - and that's two night's dinner for not much over twenty bucks. If you are closer to the city there is a similar setup at Toko H20. Bloody bagus, mate.

This post was brought to you by Mr Grumblebum J. Pussycat of Newtown. Sometimes he's in the mood for a pat, sometimes he's a bit bitey. We love him all the same.