When Barg Continental Restaurant (6417 Hampton) opened its doors at 11:30 a.m. on May 21, customers hungry for authentic Afghan cuisine didn’t stream in—but owners Ameen Akbarzada and Zach Zabih weren’t worried.
The restaurant opened on the fourth day of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims around the world fast from sun up to sun down. “By sundown, this place was full, every seat taken,” Akbarzada says. “We’ve been busy all the nights since.”
Find the best food in St. Louis
Subscribe to the St. Louis Dining In and Dining Out newsletters to stay up-to-date on the local restaurant and culinary scene.
The two owners, who have been friends for 16 years, both immigrated to the St. Louis from Afghanistan. There, Akbarzada’s father owned a restaurant.
“When I was 8 years old,” he says, “I was working there cleaning tables. I always had a dream to open a nice restaurant, a place where people could be happy, have a good meal, and leave with a smile. Zach has been on his own since he was 11, so he learned how to cook the traditional Afghan dishes we serve today. He and chef Khal eq Abdul run the kitchen.”
For starters, try the sambosas (pictured below), which are deep fried pastries filled with a mixture of potatoes, herbs, cilantro, and green onions. Zahib pairs the sambosas with a tasty cilantro red pepper chutney that’s bracing, pleasantly hot, and addictive. The plate of five pieces, topped with fresh chopped cilantro and herbs, worked well with another dish, Afghani mantu.
The mantu (pictured below) is on the entrée menu, but it provided the perfect appetizer portion for three people. These steamed little dumplings, stuffed with seasoned ground beef and finely chopped onions, are served at room temperature. They are topped with chopped herbs, split chickpeas in a piquant sauce, and garlic yogurt. The soft bite provided a nice contrast to the crisp, hot sambosas.
Entrées run the gamut from Barg’s signature Afghani burger to the Emperor Platter, a behemoth of a dish (for two) with lamb, chicken, and koobideh kabobs served with shirazi salad, eggplant boorani, grilled tomatoes, and rice.
The burger (pictured below) isn’t a burger at all. “It’s a popular sandwich in Afghanistan, a much healthier alternative than an American hamburger,” Akbarzada says.
A soft wrap of a thin naan encases a filling of fried beef sausage slices combined with seasoned French fries, cilantro marinated cucumbers, matchstick cut sweet onions, chopped hard-cooked eggs, and a spicy ketchup. The soft potatoes provided a good foil for the vegetables. The sausage and hard-cooked egg combination is a great match. “Try the cilantro chutney on your sandwich,” Akbarzada advises. The chutney was indeed the perfect addition; our host’s suggestion was on the mark.
We also tried the Lamb Qabeli Palau, a gorgeous dish to behold. A perfectly cooked lamb shank, lightly spiced, came to the table covered over with long-grain basmati rice cooked in lamb stock. The rice, topped with grated carrots and raisins, was pure comfort. The palau comes in a chicken version as well.
Other dishes on the must-try list for me include their traditional Afghani bolani, a flatbread stuffed with seasoned potatoes and scallions, which is then lightly sautéed.
“We also cook Indian specialties, which aren’t on the menu, like chicken tikki masala, biryani, and more. After my family fled Afghanistan, we spent 11 years in Pakistan before coming to the United States,” Akbarzada says. “We welcome our Indian friends. I speak Hindi as well, and we have catered Indian weddings and parties, as well as meetings and house parties.” In addition to his front-of-house duties, Akbarzada handles the catering orders.
Barg moved into the space vacated last year by MK’s Asian Persuasion. Barg retains the cozy club chairs in conversation corners, and the spacious patio remains the same, but the karaoke stage has been transformed. The owners put in a traditional colorful Afghan seating area at the rear of the restaurant with rugs and cushions for shared meals.
The day we visited, of the side-by-side televisions, one played a Bollywood movie while the other played sports. A slide show of the people, places, and traditions of Afghanistan flashes at the back wall.
“If people want to know about Afghanistan, about who we are, about what happened there, they ask about the slides,” Akbarzada says. “It’s a way of telling our stories, our past, as well as sharing our dishes.”
In our language ‘barg’ means ‘leaf,’ which is why we have a leaf on our logo.”
