Gone without a trace

Kabul, the Afghan restaurant on Second Street, has closed. My sister and I walked past their spot at some point while she was here, and there was no sign of them—just papered-over windows and a sign announcing that soon a new sushi (!!) establishment would open in that space.

I was crushed. Kabul's lunch buffet was a culinary treat—delicious, interesting food (their milk pudding sprinkled with crushed pistachios, alone, was worth the price, which was extremely reasonable, considering you could eat as much as you liked, and I liked it all). Their dinner menu, I thought, was less tasty, for some reason, but there always seemed to be a decent crowd in for the dinner hour (though not so for the lunch). The staff were wonderful, too, gracious and friendly and always ready to answer questions about the food and extoll the virtues of Afghani cuisine.

So now we get another sushi place. Whoopee. Time was, Davis was overrun with Chinese food and pizza places, the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a college town. But though there is still plenty of pizza around, there haven't been any new ones opening recently, and Chinese is losing favor (Kabul opened in a spot vacated by a Chinese restaurant that itself hadn't been there all that long). Now it's Thai and sushi, both of which are fine. But who needs so many, and who needs another sushi place when the loss is Kabul? OK, I know it's not the sushi joint's fault; not enough people thought Afghan food was what they wanted to eat on enough days. Even as much as I liked it, I wasn't what you'd call a regular customer, just a now-and-again one. And restaurants fail at astronomical rates. Nevertheless, I'm sorry to see Kabul go; I hope the owners manage to open somewhere where maybe they'll do better. I know I'll miss that milk pudding.