Categories: FoodLondon

Samarkand – Uzbek Cuisine

Back to London after a few days off in Tallinn and Riga and the weather has turned gloomy and cloudy. Days are getting shorter which only means more time spent inside, eating and try out new places here in London. Having grown up in Hong Kong meant eating a lot of South East Asian food and never really trying much from the Central Asia area. When an Uzbekistanian restaurant opened up in central London, curiosity got to me and I simply had to give it a go. Samarkand near Goodge Street is a sleek and spacious restaurant offering some very unique and interesting tastes from Uzbekistan. Drawing vague similarities with my childhood dishes, the meal was delicious and full of flavour.

Uzbek Food

Located underground, the interior of the restaurant is filled with blue marble tiles, shiny and slick. The restaurant itself is quite large and well decorated. The menu had a large selection to choose from and the front gives you a brief introduction to the restaurant and the food journey via the Silk Road.

We went for the sharing approach and ordered two starters and their traditional national dish for a main. The Manti are traditional dumplings with beef & lamb or pumpkin. We were intrigued by the pumpkin but went for the meaty option. Combined with the dip, it was a juicy and a delicious mouthful.

Again, my obsession with aubergine meant we ordered the Baklajon, Uzbek style smoked aubergine caviar. This was their version of a babaganoush and was definitely very different. This was a dense pate looking texture that was accompanied with slices of crunchy biscuits and a handful of pomegranate pulps. The flavours were light and gave a nice aubergine taste, which went well with their portion of dense and delicious homemade bread.

The National Dish

The main was a traditional dish called the Smarkand Plov, beef short rib with a bed of rice and garnish underneath it. The texture of the beef was soft from the slow cooking which made it fall apart easily. The garnish was a mixture of carrots, onions and chickpeas and gave the dish an extra crunch and flavour. What was interesting was the rice, which was really sticky and glutenous. We tried to draw similarities between this dish and the Chinese dish of sticky rice cooked in lotus leaves. But this was much drier in texture and the flavours were very different. This was strangely addictive and the handful of pomegranate bits meant an unstoppable munching on this rice. As a dish it went well together, very different but tasty. Enjoy this dish with a refreshing side salad (Achichuk). The heritage tomatoes were very fresh and a good balance to the sticky rice.

Drinks

Vodka lovers will really enjoy this place. The menu has a large selection of flavoured spirits, but go for a short walk to their bar and you will find a cabinet full of bottles of homemade vodka. The flavours are intended to match the those from their kitchen, with some interesting choices such as Szechuan pepper, bay leaves, rosehips, lavender and rose buds.

All in all, this was a very unique cuisine and offered some interesting flavour combinations. Would recommend this if you haven’t tried any food from the Central Asian region!