Having recently visited Central Asia I was keen to visit a local restaurant which I’ve never been to before which served Uyghur food. The Uyghurs are a Turkic and Muslim ethnic group, and having been persecuted in China, many have migrated to Kazakhstan.
As it was my birthday, we booked a table in advance, and I asked for a window seat in what is a relatively small restaurant with around 20 tables.
Whilst there were some familiar dishes on the menu, there were some to avoid: spiced beef tongue and spicy tripe from the cold dish section and spicy lamb trotters from the hot dish section. You possibly have got the idea that the Uyghur food is on the tad spicy side.
We chose what we hoped would be a light tasty starter of samsa, described as crispy Uyghur samosas stuffed with lamb, onion and spices, which looked very much like Cornish pasties.
During our travels we found that the courses were served as they were cooked regardless of whether you had finished what you were eating. It was therefore no surprise when our main courses came out before we finished the samsa. The two dishes were placed in the centre and were ideal for sharing. We chose chicken with stir-fried leghmen (fat, worm-like noodles with peppers and spring onions sprinkled with sesame seeds), and shredded beef with vegetables and a nice sized portion of rice. Fortunately for my non-spice head husband, our dishes were not too hot.
Just as I was debating about whether to try the honey cake, the music suddenly ramped up and thinking that this was it for the rest of the night, I exchanged knowing glances with a lady sat at an adjacent table. I had to eat humble pie when a slice of honey cake, big enough to share, was brought to the table with a candle and accompanied by a rendition of happy birthday, as my husband had tipped them off when we had called in.
This is a BYO place, and we had taken a bottle of wine, with the young guy providing a corkscrew and wine glasses and explaining their policy is to charge 20% service charge instead of the usual 12%. Having your own drinks, obviously reduces the cost of the bill, and we paid around an extra £3.50, which was very reasonable. For those not living locally there is an off licence across the road.
The restaurant is situated near Walthamstow Central, so if you fancy trying something different, this is the place to go.
Jay Rayner reviewed its sister restaurant in Finchly for The Guardian as he refused to travel to Walthamstow – https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/sep/11/jay-rayner-restaurant-review-etles-uyghur-london-you-will-be-very-well-fed
