I had lunch at the Kabul chow hall once. Real plates and glasses and real eating utensils! And the food was great. As opposed to the KBR chow halls that used paper plates and cups and plastic eating utensils. And served very mediocre food. Bagram Air Base was where I spent Christmas 2006. Eat hearty lads. And have as Merry a Christmas as you can.
I was working at Kabul Airport in 2006 at the ISAF compound next to the terminal buildings. The mess hall there was run by Brits with most of the help coming from from Pakistan or Indonesia. You are right about the real plates and glasses, but we sure had to eat way too much mutton while I was there. There were 31 sign-in sheets at the mess hall, one for each country that had people assigned there.
We Americans were the minority there at that time, only about 40-50 of us, mostly civilians. One of the big advantages we had was an “All Forces” club where we get 3 beers a day. We had a lot of visitors from other US bases that would come in to “inspect” our operations and we would always make sure they visited the club. We never failed an inspection.