Uzbek – The Saboscrivner

Chayhana

Chayhana (https://chayhanaorlando.com/) is an Uzbek restaurant that serves authentic Uzbek and Central Asian food, all of which is halal. It is located at 851 State Road 436, #1027, Altamonte Springs, FL 32714, in the long plaza at the intersection of State Roads 436 (Semoran Boulevard) and 434. I’ve had Uzbek food before, at Caravan Uzbek & Turkish Cuisine, but that’s all the way across town from me, in an area I never go. I was excited to finally try Chayhana, which is a lot closer. I’ve brought takeout home twice now, and it was great both times.

My wife is the biggest hummus aficionado I know. She loves hummus to the point where I wonder if I should be jealous of hummus. (With all honesty, I am very secure in our marriage, and I am always glad when she enjoys anything.) Not long after we both discovered the greatness of The Hummus Guy food truck in Maitland earlier this year, we realized Chayhana’s hummus was very different, but also terrific. They sprinkle theirs with some light seasoning, drizzle on olive oil, and top it with a few chick peas. And if I may, what’s the difference between a garbanzo bean and a chick pea? The president has never paid to watch a Russian garbanzo bean. Hey-o!

The hummus came with these warm, lightly grilled pita wedges for spreading or dipping. I consider myself a bit of a pita connoisseur, since there are good and bad kinds, and this is the good kind that gyros are often served on. You can buy the Kontos brand of this kind of pita at some places, like the halal Indian market Apna Bazaar, with locations on South Orange Blossom Trail and on 434 in Longwood.

My wife also loves kasha, or buckwheat (o-tay!), a nutty and earthy grain that is toasted and then boiled until tender, kind of like couscous. I ordered her this grechka, which is warm buckwheat, sprinkled with parsley.

I ordered this pumpkin manty with her in mind. Manty are filled dumplings with a soft, thin, chewy, handmade dough wrapper, kind of like Chinese wontons, Italian ravioli, or Polish pierogi. These manty were much larger than any wontons, ravioli, or pierogi I’ve ever seen, though. And yes, they were stuffed with seasoned pumpkin, onions, and spices for a delicious dish vegetarians would love. Actually, anyone would love these. I thought they might be a bit bland, but they were anything but. And look at the pattern on the outside. They didn’t have to make them look that beautiful, but someone went to the trouble of doing that to all the manty!

This dish is Chayhana’s best-seller, and you can see why. It is plov, a dish of fragrant, buttery fried rice cooked with halal-certified beef and lamb, carrots, onions, scallions, a hard-boiled quail egg, and pomegranate arils. It is gorgeous, isn’t it? It looks like Christmas, with the parsley, scallions, and shiny red pomegranate arils sparkling on top. It’s delicious, too. I preferred it to the similar rice dish at Caravan called to’y osh.I mentioned this in my recent review of Gateway to India, but plov shares its etymology with a more familiar rice dish, pilaf (always so good and buttery from Turkish restaurants like Bosphorous and Istanbul Grill), and they both evolved from Persian pilau, along with Indian biryani, another beloved rice dish. I love that so much.

But that’s not all! I had to try the boso laghman, a dish of hand-pulled wheat noodles, halal beef, thin strips of an egg omelet, sauteed onions and bell peppers, and sprinkled with parsley and sesame seeds, all sauteed together in a savory sauce. Those are the omelet strips on top, not the noodles.

Here are the noodles, and they were so nice and chewy and al dente. The sauce gave everything the slightest smoky flavor. I also ordered laghman at Caravan, and while it was very good, I once again give the edge to Chayhana. I’ve mentioned in a few different reviews that the term laghman was derived from the Chinese lamian (like the wonderful, chewy noodles I reviewed earlier this year at SLAP! Hand Ripped Noodles), and that’s how we also got the Chinese lo mein and the Japanese ramen.

Here is my plate. What a bounty! And now you can get a good look at how gorgeous the dough sculpting on that manty was.

After reading the menu, my wife asked me to bring her pistachio cake, which I was happy to do. But when I got there, they had two different pistachio desserts, and I wasn’t sure which one she wanted, so I brought both home. That’s the kind of husband I am.

This dome-shaped dessert was the pistachio cupala, which Chayhana imports from a Michelin-starred bakery in Turkey. I didn’t have any (I’m avoiding sweets, and this didn’t look like my thing anyway), but she seemed to like it.

She preferred this Antep dream cake (topped with finely crushed pistachios above that rich, creamy layer of chocolate). It was not listed on the website, but it was available when I went in. I think it looks more appetizing, personally:

Everything was such a treat, I returned a few weeks later for another round of takeout.

The hummus wasn’t sprinkled with that seasoning or adorned with extra chick peas the second time, but she still liked it a lot:

The plov was still wonderful:

SinceI feel like I ran amok with carbs on our first takeout trip, I resolved to eat a little healthier the second time around. This was the chicken shish, served in small chunks rather than one long skewer so it could fit in a small takeout box. I could tell the chicken was marinated in herbs and spices and grilled, but I most admit, the picture on the website made it look better with the nice caramelization from grilling. I don’t think it lived up to the “golden and smoky” description from the menu. It was chicken breast meat, which is certainly healthier (and it’s what I cook and eat at home all the time now), but I think thigh meat is always more flavorful and feels like more of a treat.

I preferred the lulya kebab, made of seasoned halal ground lamb and beef that was skewered and grilled. This is the kind of thing I will always order at any Middle Eastern or Central Asian restaurant, kind of along the same lines as the lamb adana kebap I ordered at Istanbul Grill or the Iraqi kebab we tried at Rawsha Mediterranean Cuisine. Both kebabs were served with red onions (some raw, some grilled) over very thin flatbread.

We have yet to dine in at Chayhana, but there is a nice little dining room that looks comfortable. When I picked up my takeout orders, it was during the holy month of Ramadan, and smiling Muslim families were just starting to show up for dinners. Everyone looked so happy to be there, and hopefully I’ve communicated why. Chayhana is the very definition of a hidden gem, serving food that may be somewhat familiar, but with unique twists. It makes you think about geography, about how little we (as Americans) know about Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries, but how their cuisine has so many similarities with Turkish and other Middle Eastern fare, and how they all evolved from shared origins. That makes our increasingly complicated world seem a little bit smaller, and hopefully gives us all a little hope that we’re not so different, you and I. And for those of us who live in the Orlando area, we are so lucky to have a diverse culinary scene that allows more than one Uzbek restaurant to survive and thrive, even in super-suburban Altamonte Springs.

Caravan Uzbek & Turkish Cuisine

Night and stars above that shine so brightThe mystery of their fading lightThat shines upon our Caravan
–“Caravan,” lyrics by Irving Mills, music by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol

It took me 45 minutes to drive to Caravan Uzbek & Turkish Cuisine (https://caravanhalal.com/) on a late Saturday afternoon, arriving right at 5 PM to pick up takeout that I ordered online at 4:15. The restaurant looked nice inside, but it was too early for dinner, so it wasn’t busy. For this first visit, my wife didn’t feel like driving all the way to South Orlando with me, but I was more than happy to race back home with dinner in my heating bag. I had been wanting to try Caravan ever since I first heard about it some time last year, since we both love Turkish food, and a lot of our old favorites had either closed or let us down. And I’m obsessed with trying new cuisines, so I was even more excited to try Uzbek food for the first time.

Interestingly, the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan isn’t even next door to Turkey. While Turkey straddles Europe and Asia and borders the Black Sea to the north and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, Uzbekistan is further east and completely landlocked by five different countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan. Since you were dying to know, Uzbek and Russian are the main languages spoken, and like Turkey, Islam is the majority religion, even though both countries are considered secular states. Still, with majority Muslim populations in both Turkey and Uzbekistan, that explains why all the food at Caravan is halal.

We started out getting a mezze platter, the combination of cold dips that is so refreshing and rewarding at almost every other Turkish restaurant we have enjoyed in the past. We got five different dips, all packaged conveniently in separate plastic containers with lids that snapped on tightly, leading to no spills or leaks on the way home, which is always nice. Each dip was topped with a grilled olive, which was a nice touch.

Hummus, which you’ve surely had before, in one form or another:

Babaganush, the smoky eggplant dip that is my wife’s favorite:

Ezme, my personal favorite, which is like a spicy Turkish pico de gallo with finely processed tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, hot red pepper paste, parsley, and lemon juice. This was a terrific version of ezme, like some of the nicest, freshest salsa or pico ever.

Haydari, a creamy, yogurt-based dip with dill, mint, and chunks of walnut:

The website said we would also get spinach sautéed with onions as part of the mezze platter, but instead of that, we got cacik, another cool and creamy yogurt-based dip that is thinner, with cucumber, garlic, and mint. I was curious about the spinach and onions, but the cacik was good, so no complaints from me.

Instead of puffy, fluffy lavas bread like we’ve had countless times from Bosphorous, Zeytin, and the late and lamented Beyti, we ordered a Turkish bread called ekmek. We got two round pieces, dusted with light and black sesame seeds. They were more like standard loaves of bread that hadn’t risen very much, as opposed to true flatbreads like lavas or pita. I ripped off pieces of ekmek to dip with gusto, but my wife wasn’t super-into it.

I also ordered Uzbek bread, but was a little disappointed that Caravan just gave us wedges of store-bought pita, like I have bought countless times at various grocery stores:

The entrees we ordered were all really good, starting with an order of semechki, or lamb ribs, from the shish kebob section of the menu. I love lamb in all its forms, especially braised lamb shanks, but I realized I have never tried lamb ribs, despite being a gigantic fan of beef and pork ribs. The grilled lamb ribs were pretty tiny, without a whole lot of meat on the small bones, but the meat that was there was very tender, with intense flavor from the grill. There were six pieces in the order, and they were served on a soft flour tortilla that absorbed the delicious meat juices.

My wife chose the to’y osh, an Uzbek dish of Lazer rice seasoned with cumin, coriander, raisins, sautéed onions, and yellow carrots cooked until they were soft, tender, and sweet. It was topped with shredded beef that must have been braised, because it was really tender too. Like I said, this was our first time trying any Uzbek dishes, but it reminded me strongly of biryani, a popular Indian dish of rice mixed with meat and vegetables that may have Persian origins. The to’y osh was very subtly seasoned, lacking the strong flavors of biryani rice, but it was a heart, savory dish with a nice combination of textures.

Even though we liked everything except the store-bought pita (which I’m still going to salvage by baking it in the oven on the convection setting to crisp it up), the biggest hit for both of us was the fried laghman, the dish I’ve seen almost everyone order in the handful of Caravan reviews I’ve read so far. This was a dish of hand-pulled wheat noodles, and since I am a noodle nerd, the name laghman comes from the Chinese lamian (for hand-pulled noodles, like you would get at Mr. J Hand-Pulled Noodle in Ocoee), which also led to both lo mein and Japanese ramen. These long, chewy, thick noodles were stir-fried in a wok with fresh vegetables and tender strips of beef with a soy-based sauce — almost like lo mein. When I looked it up, I wasn’t far off — laghman comes from the Uyghur people, an ethnic, primarily Muslim minority who live in China (where they are horribly persecuted) and have other communities in Uzbekistan and the other Central Asian countries that surround it. This was also our first experience trying any Uyghur cuisine.

The laghman noodles looked like they would be spicy, and I was hoping they would be spicy, but much to my wife’s relief, they weren’t. The only spicy things we ended up with were the ezme and a chunky hot sauce that came with the lamb ribs. And I was all ready to use the cool, creamy, refreshing haydari and cacik to put out fires in my mouth, too!

This was an interesting first visit to Caravan, one that inspired me to do some geographic research before writing this review. I had been wanting to go there with a group for quite some time, so we could order a bunch of dishes and share everything, but that hardly ever happens anymore. Bringing home takeout to share with my ever-patient wife worked just as well, and we ended up with plenty of leftovers. I have no idea how often I’ll make it back to Caravan, just because it is so far from home, but I feel like we made some great choices for our first trip.