Kabuli Grill

Kabuli Grill is a small Afghan restaurant on 34th Avenue in the western end of Astoria, cooking the traditional dishes of Kabul for a neighborhood that has long been one of the city's great crossroads of immigrant food. It describes itself as community-focused, and it works equally well as a sit-down meal, a pickup order on the way home or a late dinner, since the kitchen keeps long hours. Afghan cooking sits at the meeting point of Central Asian, Persian and South Asian traditions: think charcoal-grilled kebabs, fragrant rice, soft flatbreads, yogurt sauces and dumplings, with warmth from spice rather than heat. Kabuli Grill offers a friendly, low-key introduction to all of it.

The house favorites are mantoo, delicate beef-and-onion dumplings topped with yogurt and a tomato and lentil sauce, bolani, thin flatbreads stuffed with potato or greens and crisped on the griddle, and lamb kebab from the grill. Customers on the restaurant's own site single out the bread and the sauces, and portions are generous. Kabuli Grill was featured by the YouTuber New York Turk in 2025, on the last day of Ramadan, when Afghan and other Muslim families across Queens gather for evening meals. Order directly through the restaurant's website for pickup or delivery within about five miles, or stop in and eat at a table.