General observations first.

Any bad food memories that might have lingered from our epic Russian trip back in 1993 (those unforgettable "people's oats" and "people's mayonnaise", for example, with their overwhelming taste of metal...) have been monumentally dispelled. The food here has been fantastic. And not too expensive. We reckon we pay (both at the bottom and top ends of the scale) about what we pay in Malaysia.

The place where we're staying is a notch above our normal level of hostelry these days, but it's been pleasant to have a bit of luxury, and the breakfasts have been superb. It's so nice to have on offer things like potato puree, boiled potatoes and parsley, buckwheat, chicken and mushrooms in a creamy sauce, vegetable selections heavy on cabbage and capsicums, and various pancake creations, sweet or savoury, rolled or folded.

Both at the breakfast buffet and at the supermarket there's a fine range of dairy products on display. I can't even find some of them in the dictionary. (And the supermarket, be it noted, is ram-jam full of German products, which have transported me right back to my youth. Germans do make the best chocolate biscuits in the world...)

Almaty's cafe scene is thriving. We've tried Urban Coffee, Local Coffee, Coffeedelia, and Coffeeroom (where the hot chocolate is superb). Almatians obviously like the outdoor cafe terrace experience even when the weather is inclement, as almost all cafes provide blankets (me, I'm: "If I'm going to need a blanket, I sit inside").

A propos of chocolate, Almaty's local brand, Rakhat, is well worth trying (I actually already knew Kazakh chocolate was good, having once been given some by a former student). The factory perfumes the surrounding streets delightfully.



In a region as fluid as Central Asia, it's difficult to draw sharp lines between cuisines, and say definitively "this dish comes from here". But some standout meals from broadly distinguishable traditions have been these:

Gosti does refined and delicious Russian food in a beautifully decorated setting. We tried the beetroot salad, the quail with a millet mash, and a kind of chicken schnitzel with lots of texture in the coating. And I finally got the chance to try kvas (a fermented bread drink -- and a word I encountered way back when I first attempted to learn Russian).






The Green Bazaar needs a food blog all to itself, with its massive arrays of dairy products (and in this context "dairy" means pretty much any animal that produces milk), hunks of very fine-looking meat, piles of dried fruit and nuts, and so much more. (Dennis Keen does a walking tour of this market, but the trips don't get going again until May. We don't generally do tours these days, but this one, well, next time, maybe...)

Upstairs are a few little cafes, and we ended up at one called (I think) As Salam Alleikum. (Note that the stairs -- which are a little hard to locate -- project you directly into this cafe, not into some broad common area where you can snoop around several establishments. But there's absolutely no reason not to eat here.)

For very little money, Nigel obtained a classic plov, and I enjoyed a plate of really tasty laghman noodles. The latter is a Uyghur dish found all over Central Asia, apparently. The name comes from the Chinese "la mian" or hand-pulled noodles. But these particular noodle chaps are thicker, and have a really awesome chewiness. I had the "guiru" version with rough-cut meat and vegetables. There's also a "sairu" version, with everything chopped more finely.



The Silk Road Chef will tell you all about these noodles. (I love this guy. How can you resist anyone whose motto is "make plov not war"?)

Fakir is an Uzbek place not far from the Green Market. I ordered the chicken shashlik. When they ask you whether one stick is enough, the answer is yes, especially if you order a portion of rice to go with it... Impaled on the sword-like skewer that arrives are four hefty and tastily marinated bits of chicken, with a big portion of mild onions on the side. Very good. And with Nigel's laghman and two cups of tea, less than KZT 2,000 (or MYR 20).

And finally, Gakku, where we had our classic Kazakh lunch...

It's not hard to find websites that recommend "Kazakh" dishes, only to be shot down with rebuttals that such-and-such a dish is Uzbek or whatever (we get these squabbles in Southeast Asia too). And I will be happy to take correction here. But I think I can risk saying that "beshbarmak" does seem to be heavily associated with Kazakhstan.

This is feast food, and carries a whole weight of cultural history with it. As you can see from their menu, Gakku has an entire section devoted to beshbarmak for big parties.

We had the more modest version (which lacked the broth, unfortunately, although I guess we could have ordered it separately). But what we got was a plate layered with thin boiled dough, pieces of very tender mutton and horse, and onions (see the picture at the top).

(On a side note, my grandfather would be turning in his grave to know I'd eaten horse... Within the family he had a reputation as a hard, hard man, but he paradoxically had a soft spot for horses. According to my mother, when he was serving in Belgium in the First World War, he was appalled to come across horse butchers... Suffice it to say, the horse we had today was a good bit of meat, as indeed has been all the meat we've had here.)

We ordered a few grilled vegetables on the side (not traditional), and found the whole thing incredibly filling.

This was partly because we'd chosen airan to drink (a fairly thick yogurt drink we'd previously come across in Turkey), and kicked off with a bread basket... This contained a traditional flatbread, a couple of pieces of kurt (this is a fairly hard, fairly salty, fairly pungent cheese -- you wouldn't want too much, but I quite liked it), and a number of bits of baursak (this is fried dough, a cross between an Indian puri and an Indonesian doughnut). All delicious -- but yes, well, filling... We didn't need to eat for the rest of the day...


Anyway, this has all been great. One of the enormous pleasures of travel is finding new food traditions, and experiencing everywhere that these traditions are fascinatingly malleable and rich in history.