WEDNESDAY - Uzbek Dinner

WEDNESDAY - It is so great to see Bill & Suzie again! They have not changed since we last saw them over 10 years ago unless it's that they are even more cheerful and wonderful to be around; what great friends!


Our first night in, they took us to a street known as New Arbat. There's an Old Arbat that was originally sort of a market district with lots of shops and food that now primarily draws tourists, and has beautiful old buildings around a pedestrian cobblestone street. New Arbat is like a little Las Vegas. Bright lights, restaurants, huge movie theatres, and casinos. Moscow as a culture is flush with cash, but that money is not well distributed. Most people are working hard and barely getting by and things are very expensive.


We took dinner at an Uzbek restaurant who's name I can't do justice, but is approximately something like "Koosh-moosh". I'd not had Uzbek before, but the cuisine is similar to Middle Eastern or Greek dishes.










We started with some beers: a Russian beer that reminded me of a German lager with some great soft, round breads for an appetizer, but what really stole the show were 'samsas'. This triangle-shaped savory pastries were a soft bread, brushed with an egg wash, and sprinkled with black sesame seeds. The pastry was so good, they really could have stopped there, but the insides were either a mashed potato mixture with herbs, or finely minced lamb and onion, seasoned with tarragon. Yum!



Bill ordered a soup that I think is pronounced 'laymayan' (gotta bear with me, I can't type cyrillic and it wouldn't do much good anyway - I can barely read it and almost no one reading this will either :) ) It was warm and lightly lemony, with wonderful middle-eastern spices, fresh herbs chopped on top, and the most tender, wonderful lamb.





Suzie had a pilaf, that I think here is pronounced 'poh-lohsh'. Again, a great mix of spices and tender lamb; I had a hard time restricting myself to one bite.







My entree was a assortment of kebobs. I was pleasantly surprised to see them served with the skewer removed. Wish more US restaurants would take the hint there. They were served with flat bread (like a tortilla) and some lightly cooked onions and tomatoes.

One was tender pieces of lamb, lightly seasoned, another was chicken, also lightly seasoned, and then two ground meats, both spicier than the whole meat pieces. The ground chicken one reminded me of Thai dishes with kind of a sweet, savory flavor. The ground lamb one was outstanding; fresh minced parsley inside, garlic, and some other seasonings I was too distracted by the wonderfulness of it all to note at the time. What a great evening.

After that, we headed to Old Arbat and unknown to us at the time, we were already headed on our first night to... RED SQUARE!!