There is often no better way to understand a culture than to experience its cuisine. North Charleston’s Afghan Restaurant and Market, which opened in fall 2025 at 5101 Ashley Phosphate Road, is a testament to this.
The restaurant-market is owned by Fauzia Garner, a native of Kabul, Afghanistan. Garner has been enmeshed in the Charleston culinary scene since 2007, working in restaurants and through her own food truck. Throughout this time, Garner realized Afghan families living in the area did not have a market to buy foods from home. This, and a desire to share the food of Afghanistan with the wider community, was the impetus behind opening the restaurant and market.
A lifetime of preparation
Garner moved to Frankfurt, Germany, from Kabul when she was 16. After high school, she started working as a server at a hotel restaurant while also catering with her mother.
“I learned everything from my mom,” Garner said. “The stuff was a gift from God. The recipes that she taught me. Everything was homemade and that’s what we’re trying to do here at the restaurant.”
During her time in Germany, she met her husband. They relocated to Toms River, N.J., in 1994. Garner went to college in the United States to learn English, and she and her husband moved up and down the east coast several times for his job…