Spotlight On Uighur Food

With all of the attention being given to the treatment of Uighurs in Mainland China, it's not surprising to see that focus is also being drawn to Uighur cuisine.  This was evidenced by a message recently received from my friend and food journalist Clarissa Wei, who asked me if she might add some quotes from me on the topic for an article she's writing on Uighur restaurants.  I'll leave Clarissa's article for a substantive discussion of Uighur food in Southern California, but it did bring back memories of my earlier quest for Uighur food when I first heard about it roughly 15 years ago.

I believe my interest in Uighur food started with comments on the old Chowhound food message board, where somebody brought up the topic of these non-Han, Islamic minority peoples in Northwest China, and how some of them had made their way to Northern Virginia, outside of Washington DC.  While there were no Uighur restaurants in the United States at the time, there apparently were events where Uighur food was served.

I caught a break in 2007 when we decided to do a fly and drive vacation starting in Portland, ME and then hitting Quebec City, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Niagara Falls.  In Montreal we encountered what was then the only Uighur restaurant in the Western Hemisphere, Restaurant Uyghur, in Montreal's Chinatown.  It was truly an adventure, seeing the Central Asian staff, none of whom looked "Chinese" and eating handmade noodles and dumplings.  Indeed that trip to Montreal Chinatown was a real event for me, seeing what, like Los Angeles New Chinatown in the 1950s, was an inauthentic tourist trap (the layout of Montreal Chinatown was eerily similar to the central plaza of Los Angeles Chinatown), yet which boasted the only Uighur restaurant in the hemisphere, along with one of the few dragon beard candy shops in the hemisphere to boot.

As a result, I was well prepared for the arrival of Uighur food in the Los Angeles area.  The first entrant, and still the O.G. of Uighur food today was Omar's Restaurant on New Avenue in San Gabriel which opened in 2010.  To this day I remember that first meal there with the homemade noodles that were at least a foot long, maybe 18 inches, and a proprietress who bore a striking resemblance to HAPA actress and comedian Amy Hill, an observation which was also echoed by a restaurant reviewer.

My next Uighur food encounter was also the most interesting.  Both Restaurant Uyghur and Omar's Restaurant were located in Chinese communities and were classified generically as Chinese restaurants.  However my 2012 visit to Kashkar Cafe in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn was completely different.  Brighton Beach is the most interesting community I've visited in the United States.  Walking down the main drag Brighton Beach Ave. and then over to the beach, nobody was speaking English.  Everybody was speaking Russian.  Now I know how non-Chinese feel when walking around Chinatown, but you hear more English in Chinatown than in Brighton Beach.  Even most of the young people were not speaking English.  I made my way down to Kashkar Cafe.  The waiters and staff were European looking, consistent with reports I had read that it was not a truly Uighur restaurant, but owned by Uzbeks.  I looked at the menu and it didn't look like the Uighur menus in Montreal or San Gabriel.  My guess is that there was more Central Asian food at Kashkar.  Anyway, the manty I ordered filled with equal parts of ground meat and onions was the perfect dish--the best dish of the trip and also representative of Uighur food.  I walked a couple of blocks to the beach and ate them up there.

Since that time Uighur food has begun to spread.  In the Los Angeles area a second branch of Omar opened in Artesia, Silk Road opened in Industry and Dolan’s opened in Alhambra.  Mr. Lamb opened and closed in Rowland Heights as did Kashgar Grill In Irvine, pictured here.   

 

Kroken opened in San Diego and a number of Uighur restaurants opened in the San Francisco area, including the China based Eden Silk Road restaurants which operate in China under the Herembag banner.  An interesting episode was my visit to Uyghur Taamliri in San Francisco, which was among the most difficult eexperiences I ever had finding a Chinese restaurant.  The directions were simple--it was on Lincoln Way, right across from Golden Gate Park  But when I got to Lincoln Way, there was no restaurant across from the park.  The only business in the vicinity said Chug Pub, but then I saw another sign on the building that said Central Asia Uyghur food, so I thought to myself this was like a pop-up in the bar. However, when I walked in all I saw was a bar with pool tables, full of ordinary looking people  I had walked almost to the end of the bar and was about to exit when an Asian guy asks me if I was looking for the restaurant.  I said yes and he handed me a menu

There are naturally now Uighur restaurants in the Washington DC area, including Dolan’s Uighur which is unrelated to the identically named restaurant in Alhambra.  Apparently Dolan is a common Uighur name.  My greatest regret was never getting to eat at Uyghur Bistro In Houston just based on the incongruity in the name.  And thanks to the Uighur restaurants we now have foot long noodles joining foot long hot dogs and foot long submarine sandwiches.