Azra
Arch 136, Tilbury Road, E10
Meal for two about £130
You don’t get to be 17 stone at 11 years old without walking into people’s houses and denying that you’ve already had dinner. Like neighbours overfeeding other people’s pets, my parents grew increasingly confused about how meals of salads and fish honed such a lumpen physique. Luckily, restaurants don’t ask this question.
Under the watchful eye of their mum Sakeenah Kazemi, the head chef of an all-female kitchen, siblings Waheed, Rohullah and Zohra have transplanted a piece of their generous Afghan home life to Leyton. Named after the Hazara people in the mountainous region of Hazarajat, Azra is tucked into another of London’s archways, all beautifully lit.
Based on traditional guest rooms of Afghan homes, Azra has devoted its back wall to a takht: a padded booth where guests sit to drink tea or eat, shoes kicked off under a step. The restaurant doesn’t serve alcohol, but is BYOB.
Not that you really need booze. This place is all about the food, and there’s a lot of it. We start with naan-like panjakash — or “hand-drawn bread” — pillowy up top and deeply caramelised beneath. It comes as standard; there’s no upselling, no additional costs here. There’s a warm and silky mirza ghassemi, or smoked aubergine and tomato, rigged with pomegranate and walnut, and perkily bittered poreh nakhod, a whorl of chickpeas and sesame speckled with Afghan sumac and black lime. Bolani gandanah is an almost crepe-thin unleavened bread, stuffed with leeks and herbs, and served with chatni gazneesh, a spoonable voltage of green chillies and coriander that the kitchen should be bottling and selling. Order a glass of doogh, a carbonated yoghurt drink finished with dry mint, to quell any rising heat.
There are small plates here. We try mantu, which are hand-folded, translucent bindles of beef, doused with a tomato sauce thickened into velvet with lentils and garlicky yoghurt. But a culture intent on generosity and feeding is prominent soon after. It’s what the fat kid in me hopes for: the return of the big portion. We have kabuli pulao, an Afghan national dish and a celebratory centrepiece. I marvel at rice cooked in broth, aromatics twinkling with lamb fat and topped with a cog of lamb neck to be stripped clean and mixed through the ribbons of carrots and plump raisins. Our waiters encourage this mound to be accompanied by at least two other dishes. We oblige.
Doubling down with a five-hour braised lamb shank seems only right. Simmered to a wimp, it slinks completely from the bone to end up sculling in a sauce heady with cumin, black pepper, coriander and chilli. Strangely, the meat hasn’t taken on much flavour, though it doesn’t really matter once it’s pulled apart and mixed into the sauce. The sabzi — a metric tonne of spinach wilted down with plenty of garlic and onions — is mellow and chlorophyllic. We’re less enamoured by the morgh kebab which, while luminous with turmeric and saffron from its yoghurt marinade, arrives comparatively dry.
Maybe the family weren’t banking on quite such a deluge of people just yet? As service picks up, you can see the eyes of staff darting around to one another, like hosts at a house party who didn’t expect so many people to turn up. Whole families occupy the centre tables; the takht is almost at capacity, while a small queue forms outside, visibly in awe of what they’re witnessing.
Mint-packed carafes of water and baskets of bread are ferried out by the tray load, with even the chefs peeking into the dining room, presumably to check that the sudden torrent of orders is real. Bookings spill to the outside seating, the dining room inflated with the clamour of a feast in full swing — just how the Kazemis intended. Despite some mishaps, which can be ironed out, Azra has the charm of a supper club, with bright, clearly defined flavours and a genuine concern for appetite and a desire to satisfy it.
The fact Azra doesn’t offer dessert isn’t a deal-breaker. Chunk Provisions is nearby doing some borderline perverse things with ice cream.
What you say
Nadine Palmer: “Absolutely stunning food and environment. Staff were wonderful and we will definitely be back. My friend and I shared a lot of the dips and sharing plates as we don’t eat meat. Every dish was phenomenal.”
Julian McSweeney: “We absolutely loved it. There’s something special about proper, traditional cooking turning up in a local real part of London, no gimmicks, just done properly.”
Ibrar Khan: “Found this really nice Afghan restaurant under the rail arches in Leyton. Food was delicious — kabuli rice and manthu highly recommended.”
