You might
think getting a taste of Uzbek cuisine would involve a large dose of
post-Soviet officialdom and then a ride on a dodgy airline only to be faced
with sheep’s eyeballs for your pains.

In fact,
the quest for the taste of Central Asia can be
shortened by a trip to Bukhara Bar in District II. Fortunately, there are no
unspeakable bits of sheep on the menu, which turns out to be part exotic and
part familiar.

Uzbek
carpets and works of art decorate the walls, and there is even a room with
water pipes to complete the oriental feel. Overall, the effect is welcoming.

The menu is
very diverse and offers a large selection of Uzbek specialities including
starters, main courses, shashliks and desserts. To kick off, try the piquant
acsik-csucsuk salad with tomatoes, onions and Uzbek spices for HUF 590, or
lazzat, a red or green pepper filled with cream cheese for HUF 820. The
beetroot salad for HUF 590 is also typical of Uzbek cuisine.

Despite the
emphasis on meat shashliks at Bukhara Bar, vegetarians are not ignored. Manty –
a steamed pastry bundle with a potato or pumpkin filling – for HUF 1,290 is
meat free as is the vegetable shashlik at HUF 890.

But as in
almost every restaurant in this part of the world, however, meat-eaters have a
lot more choice: there is a range of meat shashliks priced from HUF 1,990 to
HUF 3,190. Plov, a typically hearty rice stew from the Central Asian region with meat, carrots
and raisins, flavoured with Uzbek spices, is available for HUF 1,390. It is
said that you can tell a real Uzbek chef by their plov.

Or you can
choose dimlama (HUF 2,850), lamb cooked in an earthenware pot with vegetables
and potatoes.

The
desserts are likewise suitably eastern but not unfamiliar: since the advent of
Turkish restaurants baklava no longer feels exotic. At Bukhara Bar these sweet
pastries can be ordered with walnuts or poppy seed. For something a little more
unusual try the tshak-tshak (HUF 690), a pleasantly sinful concoction of tiny
biscuits with honey and walnuts. 

Bukhara Bar
offers an insight into a cuisine whose existence is barely acknowledged in Europe. It is not going to usurp Indian, Chinese or
Japanese food, but it does make an interesting change.

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