There are hundreds of small cafes and restaurants in Tashkent offering tasty local dishes at very inexpensive prices. Use our Tashkent Restaurant Guide below for advice on what to order, as well as where to find a great meal. Many of the cafes and restaurants are located close to the bazaars and shopping streets, perfect for grabbing a snack whilst shopping in Tashkent. You should also take a look at our Uzbekistan Restaurant Guide for more detailed information on the local delicacies of Uzbekistan.

Food & Cuisine in Tashkent

Like many other Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan's cuisine revolves around the national dish, Plov, which is a fragrant mixture of rice, cooked with mild spices like cumin, carrots and meat. Plov, also known as Osh, may vary in ingredients based on regional preferences. Shaslik, consisting of chunks of lamb, beef or chicken roasted on skewers over charcoal fires, is another delicacy. Samsa, similar to South American empanadas, is pastry filled with savoury meat and onion and baked in clay ovens known as tandyrs. Tandyrs are beehive shaped and use wood as fuel to impart a distinct flavour. Local bread, known as non, is round and flat and baked in these tandyrs. Non, for which Samarkand is famous, forms a delicious accompaniment to the meat dishes here.

A typical Uzbek meal starts with a wide range of exotic appetizers or hors d'oeuvres consisting of tidbits of horsemeat, various cuts of tongue, smoked fish, a kind of caviar, slices of cheese, potato salad, some fairly spicy vegetables cooked Korean style, and seasonal fruit. The choice of soups could be Laghman, made of mutton, vegetables and noodles, or Mumpar, where pasta squares are used instead of noodles. Shurpa, with potatoes instead of pasta or noodles, and Borscht, cabbage soup, are other popular variations. The main course is a choice of shaslik, beef or lamb Stroganoff, baked chicken, chicken a la Kiev, fried or broiled cutlets and dumplings called monti. Plov invariably forms part of the main course. Tea and coffee are served towards the end of the meal.

Tashkent, like other Uzbek cities and villages, boasts of a prolific number of small cafes. These cafes offer typical Uzbek cuisine and other local dishes at very reasonable prices. Most tourists will find it easy to pick something suited to their palate and pocket. A meal of salad, bread, tea, soup and shaslik, for instance, will cost you a mere 2 to 3 US dollars.

However, one thing you might want to keep an eye out for is food hygiene. Standards vary, and sometimes the meat may be inadequately refrigerated, so it's good to be cautious.

Drinks

As with other Central Asian countries, tea is a popular beverage at Tashkent. Coffee, wherever available, is restricted to the instant variety, Nescafe. Café Amore at the MIR store just off Broadway offers good coffee. Chaikhanas are ubiquitous: in parks, bazaars, at train stations. These teahouses offer food in addition to tea. Shaslik, plov, laghman soup are available and some very reasonably priced but tasty kebab. Throughout Uzbekistan, however, real coffee or espresso is not readily available. What is to be had is the kind made of instant coffee powder with sugar and powdered milk.

Alcoholic beverages, on the other hand, are freely available in a number of shops or street stalls. Outdoor bars do brisk business in fine weather. Vodka (pretty potent brews), Uzbek wine and beer are plentiful. The Russian brand, Baltika, is a popular beer available with labels based on varying alcohol content. Baltika 3 is closest to international standards, while Baltika 0 has no alcohol. Baltika 5 and 7 are good with Baltika 9 topping the list at paint-peeling strength! A new local beer, Sarbast, is not as expensive as imported beer and at 4.2% strength for its Red Label, is quite good and not too strong. Sarbast Blue Label is available at 5.6% strength. Alcohol is expensive in restaurants, but a lot of places will let you bring your own drinks.

Nightclubs in Tashkent abound and have the usual expensive drinks on offer. They play a mixture of Russian and Western music and strip shows are a common sight. Of these, the Chelsea Arms in Abdulla Kakhar Street is based on a traditional English Pub reminiscent of East London. It even offers Wifi. Tashkent also has Irish themed bars - the new Irish Pub and Patrick Irish pub at Akhunbabaev Street.