Thank you for such a thoughtful and beautiful comment and memory, Gul. It’s really interesting to hear your food experiences as a child, and how those experiences focused less on meat and more on fruits and vegetables. Our sense of Central Asia, and surely this reflects in the cuisine — is that as societies become more wealthy, they tend to consume more meat. Perhaps that is also at work here.

In any event, this is important reading for anyone visiting the Central Asia region and looking to sample Central Asian food. The idea is not only to sample the quick, fast street food, but also to look more closely at what is fresh in the markets, and to make an effort to sample the fruits and vegetables.

Again, I’m so glad you chose to react to this article (and the limited experience that it reflects) in a negative way, but in a constructive, enlightening way. We really appreciate that.

Thank you so much, George. This is a beautifully written homage to true local cuisine in Central Asia. Pumpkin sambusas — the thought of how tasty they would be is killing me.

And it’s true, the tastes are delicate, and dependent so much on the interplay of fresh ingredients.

Thanks, Veronika. A fascinating part of the world.

The best way to eat in Central Asia is at the household of someone who has fresh ingredients or has their own preserves. Central Asian cuisine is unusual and some times a little too rustic for most Westerners. However, when it is well made with good ingredients it has a delicate and subtle flavor which, unlike Indian cuisine for example, relies on the strength of the taste of the underlying ingredients rather than a medley of spices.

Plov is excellent, one of our favorites. I think we had some in Almaty. We also ate it quite often throughout Uzbekistan:
https://photos.uncorneredmarket.com/Asia/Uzbekistan/Uzbekistan-Food-Markets/i-dgTDRRs/A

(We even ate some recently at our Kyrgyz friends’ house.)

We might have had a donar (doner?) at Zeylony Bazaar, but I actually remember having a really good one in another not-so-touristy Almaty neighborhood (forget the name) with our friend who lives there.

I would have hoped that our website is a testament to adventurous eating — and not just to wear the “look what I ate” badge, but to understand what the facets of a cuisine say about a culture. If we had our way, we’d probably never eat Snickers again. But when you’re stuck in the mountains with rock-hard bread and a sheep’s eyeball (after having eaten goat blood soup for the last two days), sometimes a Snickers is in order.

It might be an interesting note to mention that while Kazakhstan has an extensive list of delicious foods to enjoy, they’re all taken from different cultures. Beshbarmak is the pride of this country, for example. Any Kazakh-born will ask you if you’ve tried “our national dish, Beshbarmak… delicious, yes?”

Plov is also a country favorite and also one of my own. Oh, and if you’re going to the Zeylony (Green) Bazaar in Almaty, I’d say, try a donar. Another food not originally from Kazakhstan but still worth the buy if you’re wandering around hungry. It’s a big burrito stuffed with tender meat, french fries, onions, carrots and cucumbers, all panini-pressed together.

If you’re looking for a taste of American-style coffee, not far from the Green Bazaar is 4A Cafe, a shop owned by a man born in Boston. The baristas speak English and the coffee is exceptional. I mention this because of the Snickers referrence — sometimes it’s good to go to what’s familiar, even when you’re surrounded in delicious cuisine.

So that’s my two cents. I just felt I had to speak up for my beloved Kazakhstan because there’s a lot of good eats worth finding while in country. 🙂