A culinary journey through Central Asia truly connects East and West, and guides you through both Silk Road and Soviet history. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, among beautiful mountains, wide-open grasslands and desert, Islamic dietary customs are cross-pollinated with the food traditions of East Asian, Indo-Iranian and Turkic ethnic groups.
Central Asian cuisine gets a generous pinch of cooking inspiration from China, Russia and India, but it has a distinctive identity of its own. Hot teas and beautifully glazed breads are comfort foods during the winters. With a select few spices, lamb, beef and horse meat get cooked down for hours to become hearty soups, stews or a key component in plov, a rice dish. Flour gets pounded into manty or pelmeni dumplings with meat or pumpkin, stretched out by two arms’ lengths into hand-pulled lagman noodles, sweetened and fried to become baursak dessert bites stuffed with cottage cheese, or turned into a hundred variations of the savory, tandoor oven-baked pastries called samsa.
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“One thing that stands out in this region’s cuisine is a simplicity of ingredients, but arduousness of preparation,” says Syrgak Oktaybrev, the chef at Jibek Jolu, a Central Asian restaurant with locations in Lincoln Square and Glenview, Naperville, and a fourth one called Karavan, which is opening in Des Plaines. “For instance, a staple dish like shorpo (meat and vegetable soup) is cooked for at least two hours until the flavors blend really well together. And it’s also important to have meat with bones and fat for the meal to be hearty.”
A cook in Central Asia, be it a family matriarch or a restaurant owner, buys groceries and makes meals in the face of obstacles that would make many Westerners buckle: a severe regionwide water crisis, a fragile ecological system, underdeveloped agriculture and the aftermath of decades of isolation during Soviet rule. But cooking is a source of pride, a gesture of hospitality toward guests and a daily event that brings families together, and it’s allowed to take time.
Oktaybrev, who comes from the Talas region of Kyrgyzstan, points out that seasonal availability greatly influences what people cook, but potatoes, carrots, onions, turnips and greens like coriander and dill are used year-round. Meats like beef and lamb are must-have ingredients. Pasta and rice in different local variations are the main grain, and bread is eaten with every meal.
The Central Asian region has a slightly different approach to spices, compared with neighboring China and India.
“Our cooking uses the same spices — zira cumin, fennel seeds, turmeric, red and black pepper, barberry, anise, bay leaf and sesame — across multiple staple dishes,” he said. “Rarely will the food be spicy hot. Flavors are pretty straightforward, meaning that dishes have one main flavor, most of the times savory, as opposed to being sweet and sour at the same time.”
For dessert, although cakes sweetened with honey are popular, there is a special place for fruits in Central Asian cuisine.
“A special treat in the winter would be dried fruits like figs, raisins, apricots, melon and apples,” Oktaybrev says. “Fresh or dried, they’re eaten as a dessert after every meal, especially when in season.”
Hot tea drinking has been popular in Central Asia since the Silk Road days, when teas and honeys were exchanged across trade routes that spanned over 4,000 miles. For today’s tea lovers, there are plenty of black and herbal varieties that would feel familiar to our palettes. But tourists who’ve visited the Himalayan region know that those icy winter days or crazy cold desert nights usually call for a more potent brew, like the one Oktaybrev remembers from his childhood.
“Winter in Kyrgyzstan is as cold as in Chicago,” he says. “Where I grew up, kurma chai — which means ‘cooked tea’ — was a winter treat. Strong black tea is mixed with flour, which has been cooked in a beef fat until brown, and then it’s served with milk. Because it was cold outside, this tea provided us with everything we needed — proteins, carbs and liquid to warm and fill us up.”
If you’re excited to explore the cuisines of the Silk Road here in Chicago, there are several restaurants specializing in Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and other Central Asian dishes. Vegetarians will find a few options, but please note that these cuisines tend to be very meat and gluten heavy. Here are our five restaurant picks.
Anor 1985
Serving halal food, this Lincoln Park restaurant specializes in food from Uzbekistan, but they also feature Eastern European and Mediterranean dishes, along with treats that are popular in all of Central Asia. Try the vegetarian mushroom soup ($10) with lepeshka bread ($3.50), followed by shashlyk lamb ($14) or plov rice pilaf ($18). But if you’d prefer to experience breakfast as the Uzbeks do, get the very popular samsa tandoori ($5.90) with some Tashkent tea ($2.25).
1450 W. Webster Ave., 872-266-9315, chicagoeasterneuropeanrestaurant.com
Bai Cafe
Take off your shoes if you like, help yourself to some extra-strong tea and enjoy homestyle Central Asian and Russian food at this no-frills restaurant in Roscoe Village, run by a Kyrgyz couple. The steamed oromo pie ($4.99) with potatoes, onion, cabbage and carrot is a traditional Kyrgyz dish, and you can also try their take on plov ($11), the popular shashlyk chicken or lamb ($12-$14), or the shorpo soup ($4.50) with lamb or veal, potatoes, garlic and scallion.
3406 N. Ashland Ave., 773-687-8091, baicafe.a-zcompanies.com
EuroAsia
Take the chance to practice your Russian skills with the staff as you order Uzbeki and Central Asian favorites like plov ($13.95), lagman ($13.99), beshbarmak ($14.25), the empanada-like chebureki ($5.95) or the raved-about honey cake ($7.50) at this cozy hole-in-the-wall restaurant on the Near North Side.
351 W. Oak St., 312-988-0662, facebook.com/Euroasiachicago
Jibek Jolu
At Jibek Jolu’s Lincoln Square location, the ceiling is decorated with a sun and red rays in tribute to Kyrgyzstan’s flag, where the lines inside the sun represent the top of a yurt, and the rays the country’s 40 tribes. Get a kettle of tea and start with the pelmeni soup ($13.80). Pelmeni is a meat-filled dumpling that’s often associated with Siberian cuisine although it likely originated from China.
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This is the chain’s only location with boso lagman ($19), a savory stew with thick hand-pulled noodles, beef strips, onions, red and green bell peppers and celery. Marvelous scents of coriander seeds, sweet paprika and star anise rise from the bowl. A great sidekick to the lagman is the morkovcha ($10.35). This simple, but spicy marinated carrot salad is nicknamed “Korean carrot salad” and popular all over Central Asia. The lepeshka bread ($1.73) with black and white sesame seeds is a must, and maybe finish things off with a glass of dried fruit kompot ($4.60).
Locations vary, jibekjolu.us
Tary Coffee House
Tary Coffee House in River North offers a stylish and modern deep dive into the coffee and tea culture of Kazakhstan. Here in this white, light space warmed up by folkloristic rugs, clay cups and silver kettles, you can enjoy tary in your cappuccino ($7.25), tea, porridge, ice cream or cheesecake. This millet grain has been popular with Kazakh farmers for ages since it tolerates the harsh climate. If you fancy something else, go with the cottage cheese pancakes ($14) with balkaimak (honey sour cream) and pomegranate, or fried baursak bites with or without cottage cheese and jam ($9.95-$13). Another more savory lunch option is the balgyn kuyrdak ($25) with braised beef, young potatoes, red onions and farmers bread. They have several vegetarian soups, mains and alternative milks.
111 W. Illinois St., 773-322-7315, tarycoffee.com
Nikki O’Neill is a freelance writer.