Street Food in Kandahar

Kandahar's best eating is often done standing up — at a kebab grill trailing smoke, a tandoor pulling out fresh naan, or a juice cart pressing pomegranates by the roadside.

The bazaar as kitchen

Much of the city's day-to-day food culture plays out in the bazaars and along busy roadsides, where small stalls and hole-in-the-wall shops cook a handful of things very well. The offering leans toward grilled meat, fried breads, fresh bread from clay ovens and seasonal fruit. It is cheap, fast and communal. Below are the items most worth seeking out; note that the south's staples differ somewhat from Kabul's, so a few famous "Afghan" dishes are more a northern speciality.

What to eat

Chapli kebab

A flat, spiced patty of minced meat (often beef or lamb) mixed with onion, herbs and spices, then fried until the edges crisp. Chapli kebab is an eastern and southern favourite, usually eaten folded into fresh naan with raw onion and a squeeze of something sour. It is filling, messy and very good.

Chopan (lamb rib) kebab

Chopan kebab means "shepherd's kebab" — chunks of lamb, often on the bone or including ribs, skewered and grilled over charcoal with little more than salt. The appeal is the quality of the meat and the smoke, not heavy marinades. It is typically served with naan and sliced onion.

Bolani

A thin flatbread folded around a savoury filling — commonly potato, or leeks and greens — then griddled or shallow-fried until crisp. Bolani is sold hot from carts and stalls, sometimes with a yoghurt dip, and makes an ideal cheap snack on the move.

Tandoor naan

Bread is the foundation of every meal. Bakers slap flattened dough onto the hot walls of a clay tandoor and peel out long, blistered loaves minutes later. Buying naan fresh and warm from the oven is part of daily life, and it accompanies almost everything else on this list.

Fresh juices and fruit

In season, vendors press pomegranate juice to order, and stalls pile up grapes, melons, mulberries and other fruit from the surrounding orchards. A glass of fresh anar juice in autumn is a Kandahari rite; see the harvest season for timing.

A note on Kabuli dishes

Some dishes travellers expect — the steamed dumplings mantu and ashak in particular — are more associated with Kabul and the north than with Kandahar's street stalls. You may well find them in restaurants, but the southern street tradition leans more toward grilled meat, bread and fried snacks. It is worth adjusting expectations rather than hunting for a dish that is not the local specialty.

More to look for

Shorwa and boiled meat

Not everything on the street is grilled. Simple eateries ladle out shorwa, a brothy meat-and-bone soup eaten by tearing naan into the bowl and soaking it soft before scooping up the meat and vegetables. It is warming winter food and a cheap way to make a little meat feed several people. Similar stalls sell boiled or steamed offal and trotters (paya) to those who prize them.

Landi and dried meat

A southern winter speciality is landi — whole sheep or goat cured and air-dried in the cold months, then stored and later cooked with rice or in soups. It is a pastoral tradition tied to the region's flocks and the need to preserve meat through winter, more a household food than a street one, but it turns up in season and speaks to the same herding economy that supplies the kebab grills.

Sweets and snacks

Between savoury stalls, vendors sell fried dough sweets soaked in syrup (jalebi and similar), roasted chickpeas and nuts, and in season the mulberries, apricots, grapes and melons for which the province's orchards are known. Sugared almonds and other noql are sold loose from sacks, especially around festivals.

Hygiene and eating well

Street food is safest where it is busiest: a stall with high turnover cooks fresh and sells fast, so bread straight from the tandoor, meat grilled to order, and fruit you peel yourself are the surest choices. Freshly pressed juice is best drunk on the spot rather than from a bottle that has sat in the sun, and travellers with tender stomachs tend to favour hot, cooked items over raw salads and to be cautious with water and ice. None of this is unique to Kandahar; it is the ordinary common sense of eating in any busy market.

Rough prices and practicalities

Street food in Kandahar is inexpensive by any measure, and a filling meal of kebab and naan costs a fraction of a restaurant sit-down. Exact figures shift with the local currency, inflation and the season, so it is not useful to quote precise numbers; expect low prices that vary from stall to stall, and it is normal to see the going rate by watching what others pay. Meals are often shared, eaten with the right hand, and rounded off with sheen chai. For a fuller sit-down meal, the region's signature dish is Kandahari pulao. Much of what is grilled and pressed here traces back to the province's farms and orchards, and the liveliest concentration of stalls is found in and around the city's bazaars.

• Kandahar's bazaarsThe markets where most street food is found.
• Kandahari pulaoThe province's signature sit-down dish.
• Sheen chaiThe green tea that ends every meal.
• Cooking with pomegranatesMore on the fruit behind the juice carts.