Buzkashi is a rather good restaurant that has suffered from comparison to the Helmand, the only other Afghan restaurant in Greater Boston, and one of the city’s best ethnic restaurants of any kind. However, Buzkashi has lots of interesting and delicious food, some of it rather spicier and funkier than the Helmand’s equivalents. Contrast the names: Helmand is a comparatively wealthy province of southern Afghanistan; buzkashi is a rugby-like game, only rougher, in which the ball is a goat carcass and the players are on horseback.

Buzkashi is located in a glassed-in storefront with a visible glassed-in grill for kebabs. The setting is crowded and a little noisy, but comfortable enough once you’re seated. Food begins with a warm, fresh flatbread and a variety of dips: a fresh-mint chutney, a chili sauce similar to Vietnamese sriracha sauce, and a creamy sauce that looks like yogurt with a little dill, but tastes like mustard. All are quite good.

My appetizer here was vegetarian aushak ($5), homemade ravioli filled with scallions, with a mint-garlic-yogurt sauce underneath and some yellow split peas on top. The Helmand’s, which I loved, are made with leeks and shaped like Peking ravioli; these have a stronger flavor, including some hot pepper that I liked, and a more-conventional ravioli shape.

Banjan ($5) is a simple appetizer of fried-eggplant rounds, not breaded, but meltingly delicious with a mint-yogurt sauce that typifies the cuisine. We also split up a vegetarian-special entrée ($12) as an appetizer, getting us a little more of the eggplant, a heap of sour-spicy spinach, some sweet chunks of pumpkin, and a curried-okra stew that would make a fine main dish, especially with the pallow rice, a dark pilaf with bits of carrot.

The other rice is challow, which is white and super-long-grain — like Persian rice — baked up with just enough cumin for a buttery flavor without the bite. To get some, we had another vegetarian entrée, "gulpea and shalghum challow" ($11). Either the gulpea or the shalghum is a very spicy sautéed cauliflower with a kind of hot salsa sauce. The other must be turnips, done sweet like the pumpkin, with some pears on the side. This could be the vegan entrée of the year.

Not to neglect the all-important lamb. My favorite was dwopiaza ($15). This would be a tomato-based stew in an Indian restaurant, but in this cuisine it starts with marinated chunks of grilled lamb, prepared nicely medium-rare for maximum flavor, then stewed with a spicy onion sauce, and garnished with garlicky button mushrooms. Alternately, "chowpan" ($17) is three loin lamb chops, bone-in, marinated (perhaps a little over-marinated and powdery in one piece), grilled, and served in a more curry-flavored sauce, on a bed of the flatbread. It’s garnished with one of the eggplant slices, and treated with cardamom and cumin for a more Indian flavor.

We tried one side dish, sabzi ($5), because we couldn’t get enough of the spice-spinach mixtures. This one offered yet another, slightly different iteration.

Buzkashi has no liquor license — whether from Koranic belief or bureaucratic inertia, I cannot say. There is a liquor store a block up Mass Ave, and no problem bringing one’s own, or drinking the non-alcoholic beers and wines on the menu. Water, in cobalt goblets, was refilled frequently, even on a busy Friday night.

Afghan desserts draw from all along the Silk Road, from baklava ($4) to Indian-style ice creams. We were happiest with sheerberaing ($4), a rice pudding topped with ground pistachios and flavored mostly with cardamom. But we were also quite happy with feerney ($4), here a creamy pudding topped with fresh fruits and berries, and sheerekh ($4), a vanilla ice cream topped with pineapple and the same fruits and pistachio powder.

Service at Buzkashi was remarkably good given that there seemed to be only one waiter, and we arrived and left to a pretty full house. The room can be noisy, but it can also be pretty once you’re inside. Low lighting softens the boxy glass surroundings. There are photos on the wall, including the famous 1984 photo of Sharbat Gula, the young refugee girl, that is perhaps the best-known image of Afghanistan. There are also rugs and bits of weaving and embroidery, a couple of musical instruments, and some craft objects. The décor is still not up to that of the Helmand, but the spicier food is a useful variation. Buzkashi is more than a clone, even if it doesn’t quite wrestle away the goat carcass of leadership between the two Afghan restaurants of Cambridge.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.