Moscow News
06/02/2009
By Jennifer Chater
"The inspiration for Italian spaghetti" is the proud boast made by Uighur restaurants the world over. From Sydney to New York and now in Moscow, eateries specializing in this little-known Central Asian cuisine claim it was the Uighurs' lagman noodles that Marco Polo took back to Venice after his 13th century travels along the Silk Road to China - a souvenir that was copied, resulting in the Italian pasta classic.
The Uighurs are a Turkic people living mainly in the remote Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of western China. Their cuisine will strike Muscovites as being similar to Uzbek, but with a more Chinese flavor. Manty, plov, kebabs - and naturally lagman - are to be found on Uzbek and Uighur restaurants' menus alike.
Until recently your best bet for lagman was to go Uzbek, since there were few places to try Uighur cuisine in Moscow - just the odd Chinese eatery with an Uighur dish or two on the menu. Late last year, an exclusively Uighur restaurant called Kishlak opened at Avtozavodskaya, and so now there are literally oodles of Uighur noodles to try. The owners and chefs come from the Uighur region of China, so authenticity can be expected.
Kishlak is a Central Asian term for a rural settlement, originally one where nomads would spend winter. Moscow's new Uighur restaurant has a mural of such a village on one wall, complemented by dining room decor that includes artificial tree trunks, faux grapevines and dangling plastic fruit. At one end of the room is a glass-fronted kitchen where the chefs can be seen stretching noodles by hand and working their magic with a flaming wok; at the other is a dance floor with flashing lights and loud music.
Clearly this would not be the best spot for a serious business meeting over dinner or fine dining on a romantic date - Kishlak is better suited for a laid-back meal with casual company. The main drawing card here is the tasty food, the large servings at reasonable prices, and the wide selection of interesting dishes that you won't find anywhere else in Moscow.
Besides the European offerings, which we didn't try and can't recommend, there are dozens of stir-fries made with all manner of meats, plov with either lamb or beef, kebabs and shashliks galore, as well as excellent fresh-baked lepyoshka (bread) and some mighty fine samsa - try the ones with cheese.
There are 10 types of lagman noodle dishes on the menu. The stir-fried boso lagman (345 rubles) much resembles a Chinese stir-fry noodle dish, with chunks of beef, Chinese cabbage, Bulgarian pepper, tomato and onion - flavorsome enough but greatly improved by adding some of the superb hot chilli paste that's hidden among the salt and pepper shakers. The hearty suyru lagman (350 rubles) sounds similar on the menu - "finely chopped beef, Chinese cabbage, pepper, onion, tomato, spices" - but the result is quite different, thanks to the chef's masterful spice-mixing.
The menu also lists nine types of manty dumplings, but only those with lamb or beef can be made at short notice - the others need to be ordered a couple of hours in advance and include such stuffings as potato and pumpkin (50-60 rubles apiece). For dessert, the chak-chak was by far the best we'd ever had, with finer-than-usual dough strands binding honey, walnuts and raisins (160 rubles).
Kishlak would be a good place to come for a quick weekday lunch, because from 10 am to 6 pm it serves a "fast food" buffet of European and Uighur dishes for roughly half their usual menu prices.
WHERE
Kishlak: 17 Ulitsa Leninskaya Sloboda (enter from 2 Ulitsa Masterkova), (495) 739-9923, metro Avtozavodskaya, Open 8 am - last guest.
Schyot, please!
Petir manty stuffed with lamb - 55 rubles each
Syay manty dumplings of beef, vegetables and spices in bouillon - 195 rubles
Plov with lamb - 350 rubles
Postny (Lenten) lagman with potato - 325 rubles
Draft Baltika beer - 90 rubles per half-liter
Moscow now has two Prazecka beer restaurants. Wasting little time after last summer's opening of the first Prazecka at Proletarskaya, the Czech beer importers Russkaya Traditsiya last week opened the second Prazecka at Shchukinskaya. Prices have risen a little since the first opened: half-litre mugs of light, dark or red Prazecka beer were then going for 145 rubles, but now the price is 165 rubles. To go with the tasty brews, there are all kinds of Czech comestibles, such as pigs' ears with horseradish (190 rubles).
17 Ul. Marshala Vasilevskogo
(499) 190-4655, m. Shchukinskaya, prazeckarest.ru
Soho Rooms last week introduced the new head chef of its Dining Room - Laura Bridge from London. Bridge, who has been the personal chef to such luminaries as Prince Charles, Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen, has already worked for several local eateries including Correa's and Khleb&Co. Meanwhile, Soho Rooms celebrates its first birthday on Saturday, Feb. 7, with Darren Hayes of Savage Garden fame as special guest in the Disco Room.
12 Savvinskaya Nab., Bldg. 8
988 7444/7474, m. Smolenskaya, www.sohorooms.ru
Speaking of Khleb&Co., the restaurateur behind it - Stepan Mikhalkov - recently opened a champagne bar called Bubbles. A joint project with restaurateur Anton Tabakov, it would seem to be the epitome of crisis defiance (or perhaps crisis denial): champagne starts from 1,300 rubles a glass, while the cheapest glass of wine is 600 rubles.
10/13 Sadovaya Triumfalnaya Ul., 694 6987, m. Mayakovskaya, www.eatout.ru
