Just got takeout from the first Uyghur restaurant we’ve ever tried. Summary of what we had - beef dumplings, chewy noodles topped with meaty stews, and bread stuffed with ground beef and onions. Dumplings were my favorite - very simple but tasty. I liked the noodles quite a bit, but the stews were just okay. The stuffed bread was good but not great.
There were lots more things on the menu that we didn’t try. Anyone have experience with Uyghur food? Anything we should try and order next time?
Lamb skewers and naan bread. The naans are very different from Indian naans.
I’ve only been to Uighur restaurants in China, but that’s far and away the #1 choice on the menu there.
I don’t think I’ve been to a Uyghur restaurant, but my wife and I occasionally get food from a Hui Chinese halal restaurant nearby. I like the lamb skewers and pan-fried lamb buns.
Never even heard of it until this thread. I did some Googling and it does look tasty.
I can’t remember specifics, but all the Uyghur food we had in China was delicious.
As I remember but it’s been a few years:
Lamb
Leg o lamb if you can get it
definately the flat bread if it is authentic. It should look something like this with a raised pizza dough outer ring over a thinner flat inner circle. Poor description but the ring is kinda fluffy, chewy, the inner flat circle is maybe a 1/4 inch thick and very firm with sesame seeds. There are many Uighur restaurants that just do a kind of fluffy flat bread that isn’t right based on my experience in non-Uighur China.
We have three Uyghur restaurants near us. One we’ve been going to on and off for the better part of 10 years and have literally watched the little kid of the family that runs it grow up. He sits in a booth by the kitchen and started coloring pokemon in a coloring book…to a few years later playing pokemon on nintendo handheld to now being a teen on his phone…possibly playing PokemonGo.
They have a dish that is called “Big Plate Chicken”…which is just a platter of chicken parts in a very spicy sauce.
Had it in Munich. Noodles etc. Was good.
Out of curiosity: Is Uyghur cuisine part of something like an Essenbund with cuisines such as Mongolian, Szechuan, Nepalese, Kazakh, etc.? Akin to how “Mediterranean cuisine” covers a large geographical area.
Or is Uyghur cuisine very much it’s own thing with not a lot of commonality with the other cuisines I mentioned?
Reading the descriptions above, I’d say it’s a lot like the “Central Asian” cuisine I’ve had in Russia.
Kazakh/Uzbek/Tajik would all be similar. I’m not familiar with real Mongolian cuisine.
I’ve eaten at Kazakh and Uzbek restaurants and I didn’t encounter anything that reminded me of Uyghur or Islamic Chinese cuisine. But that’s just me.
No, it’s certainly different from Mongolian, Szechuan, Nepalese. Uygher lands don’t share a border with any of these, and are hundreds if not thousands of miles away from sharing a border.
Uyghur refers to the majority of people in Xinjiang Province of China. Muslims from the central asia region, and originally of Turkish origin.
Not sure about Kazakh, but my guess is prolly related to Kazakh. That said, do you mean Kazak’s from China’s Xinjiang province or something different?
There were naans, roasted lamb on skewers and meat & vegetable rice pulavs in all three. Maybe that’s just my conservative ordering.
You’re absolutely right. I went back and looked at the menus for the places we’ve gone. We just tend to stick to the noodles.