San Diego Afghan Restaurants

If you consider exotic dining amid fragrant aromas of spices and mysterious surprises in vegetable cookery to be among life's grandest pleasures, pull up a cushion and taste what the Afghans have to offer.

Under a tent are large platters and pots filled with delicacies bearing strange-sounding names. Chalau (rice) and Korma (sauce), Kebab (chicken or lamb), Naun (whole meal bread), or Lawash (whole meal flat bread). Excellent tea comes much later, long after a desert of perhaps Baklava (paper-thin layers of honey-soaked pastry and walnuts) or Gosh-E-Feel (fried pastry in the shape of elephant's ear, dusted with cardamom, sugar, and pistachios).