Where: 665 Martinsville Road, Basking Ridge, NJ

What: Afghan

Rating: 4.5/5

After another lengthy break for reasons I believe we all can understand without needing to be stated, I return to you with another review. This time I ventured to Hills of Herat with my mother on a Wednesday afternoon. My mother had found the restaurant on Open Table and became interested in trying it. We had moved from our old town about two years ago, and had left behind my mother’s old favorite Afghan restaurant along with everything else. This would be a chance to see if somewhere closer to our new town could hold up to what we were used to.

The restaurant is within a small strip mall on the side of the road, second to last from the entrance into the parking lot. The lot was almost entirely filled up with cars, although we did end up finding a space reasonably close to our destination.

There was no wait to be seated, although there were quite a few other customers sitting and enjoying their meals. Generally speaking, the restaurant was nice looking and clean. The owner and employees were incredibly friendly and personable, coming around to speak with us more than once and offering suggestions for our next visit. It should be noted that this is the second location for this restaurant and opened more recently, so I cannot give a review of the original flagship.

I would like to apologize in advance that my photos this time were not as nice as they usually are. Additionally, a few times I forgot to take a picture until we had already begun eating.

To begin we were given a lentil soup, a trio of sauces, and incredible bread. The lentil soup had a nice flavor and tasted as one may expect, although if you are more familiar with something akin daal tadka you will find it less ghee/butter-y than you might presume it to be. The flavor was good and the texture similarly fine.

The sauces should be familiar to those who often enjoy this type of cuisine. One was a yogurt sauce, which I found to be of a pleasant flavor, while another was a cilantro-based sauce, and the last a spicy red. I avoided the cilantro one as it would only taste like soap to me, and my mother stated the red one was fairly spicy but not fitting for the dish she had ordered.

The bread was truly incredible, and was part of why I wanted to come try the restaurant in the first place. It was very clearly fresh-made bread and very large in size. Compared to the usual pita in plastic bags I had come to expect, this was a lovely addition to the meal. Even without anything to dip it into or wrap within it, the bread tastes good even on its own. It is worth going to this restaurant for it alone.

I ordered a mocktail to drink alongside the complementary water. This particular one was the Smoked Cherry Chocolate Old Fashioned, and had a strong taste of shatavari and oak to it. I am not someone who drinks if I can help it, and thus did not find the drink enjoyable. I was informed by the owner when he came around that the mocktails are made without added sugar and specifically to emulate actual alcoholic drinks, hence why it was not to my taste. For those of you who drink, you should not be afraid to peruse their mocktail menu and find one that fits your preferences.

My mother got the Pomegranate Negroni and wasn’t a fan, although she did finish drinking it. This particular drink has an especially bitter taste, so only order it if you’re a fan of that sort of thing.

As you can see in the photo, we of course ordered hummus as one of our appetizers. While this was not the best hummus I have ever had, falling behind the Turkish restaurant I have previously reviewed on here (Elmas) and the one from the Lebanese restaurant my family frequents the most, I would put it third in my personal-tier ranking hummus. It had a nice flavor and a smooth texture, and I always am happy when whole chickpeas are added on top. Out of all of the appetizers we ordered, this was my favorite.

Of note, the restaurant also has two other types of hummus, a beet one and a spinach one, for customers to try. I tend to favor classic hummus over other types, but perhaps someone else may be interested in one of the others.

The second appetizer to arrive was the bolani with potato filling. This is a favorite of mine and something I typically get from Afghan restaurants, although I was surprised to see here one can choose either potato or butternut squash for the inside.

These were excellent, and the sauce they came with similarly so. The sauce complimented the flavoring of the bolani very well and were the perfect addition to a potato-based treat. I almost ate all of them on my own, although I did save one or two for my mother to nibble at. I would definitely recommend this appetizer.

Finally, the last appetizer we ordered was ashak. These are Afghan dumplings filled with chives and leeks. However much of those you are predicting would be in the dumpling, you aren’t predicting enough. To me, these are very similar to chive dumplings, jiu cai jiao, you can find at a dim sum service. To put it simply: if you like leeks and chives, get it. If you don’t particularly love them, do not.

For her entree, my mother ordered the salmon kebab, which I did not try. Along with an entree, you can have your choice of Afghan rice from the three options available: qabuli, chalaw, and naringe. Qabuli is my usual go-to and is the most typical type, with cooked sweet strips of carrots and raisins mixed in with the rice. As a fan of raisins, I absolutely love qabuli and usually ask for extra toppings. In the photo, qabuli is the rice in the middle. Chalaw is rice cooked with various spices and is the greenish looking one on the bottom. Finally, naringe is made with saffron, orange, and pistachio and is the topmost rice.

My mother was going back-and-forth on which rice to choose, so the server suggested getting a mixture of the three to try and we both ended up getting that for our orders. I wasn’t too big of a fan of chalaw, but I am not in the first place so that wasn’t due to the restaurant but rather my own tastes. The qabuli was excellent, and the naringe was surprisingly good as well after I picked out the pistachios. As a certified hater of pistachios, the fact I enjoyed the naringe despite it being cooked with pistachios should tell you that it is good. For my fellow haters out there, take heed: you can eat this.

I myself ordered the filet mignon kebab after seeing various reviews online suggesting it as the best course they had. It was indeed a stupendous kebab, I would argue perhaps better than even the one at Elmas. I had mine done to medium, but you can tell the server how you would like yours cooked. This was somewhat different from the typical restaurants I have gotten kebab at; usually you get what you get, so it was nice to be able to choose. It was a very tender and well-cooked piece of meat, and the flavors went well with any and all of the rice options. I did add yogurt sauce on top, which I recommend others do should you get a similar dish somewhere.

Although I was more than stuffed, I did end up ordering the rice pudding to try. My father is a big fan of rice pudding, so I was planning to have some and take the rest back for him.

This was an interesting rice pudding. I can’t say I’ve ever had one quite like it before. The taste was strangely nutty, and it was not the nutty of a pistachio but rather of something else I couldn’t quite decide on. I sat for quite a bit and took more spoonfuls than I had planned while trying to decide whether I liked it or not. I’m still not sure, even now. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t quite what I would expect from rice pudding. The texture as well was more smooth and didn’t have the mouthfeel of soaked rice. If what I am describing to you sounds interesting or appealing, give it a try and order it.

The final thing we ordered was the saffron tea which had caught our eye after we sat down and looked at the drinks menu. I am used to seeing black tea or mint tea at restaurants after meals, so I was curious about the taste of this saffron tea. The owner took our order for this one, and advised us that mint was added to give more flavor to the tea.

I am not sure what I was expecting. Saffron is often paraded as a legendary delicious and expensive item, and I suppose it got my hopes up that this might in fact be the best tea I would ever have. How would it compare to my usual favorites? Japanese corn tea? Brown rice tea? Turkish black tea? Moroccan mint tea? English black tea? Forget those. This would be it. The pinnacle of my tea experience.

Let me preface this by saying it was not bad. It was fine. Just fine. It wasn’t anything particularly delicious. In all honesty, it tasted like a slightly less flavorful version of the typical black tea I would get at a Lebanese restaurant after spending an evening listening to my father and his friends talk about politics and the current situation in Egypt.

It was, to put it simply, underwhelming.

Having said that, Hills of Herat is a fine restaurant with generally good food and stupendous service. The prices made sense for the items they matched and for the region the restaurant is located in. If you have the chance and want to go out to eat, I would recommend a trip.