Hanukkah is not my favorite holiday, but to mark the holiday, I thought I would talk about one of my better fried food experiences recently. It was at one of my favorite restaurants in New York, Cheburechnaya, which serves Bukharan Jewish cuisine from Uzbekistan.
“There are Jews in Uzbekistan?” one may ask. Indeed, there is a Jewish community, based largely in the city of Bukhara – hence the name Bukharan Jews. Jews migrated to Central Asia from Persia in antiquity with their religion and the Persian language, which Bukharan Jews call Bukhori. Jews lived in various conditions under Muslim rule for six hundred years, and then Russian rule from 1876 to 1991. Jews were in Bukhara, Tashkent, Samarkand, Khiva, and in Dushanbe in neighboring Tajikistan. The cuisine and culture of Bukharan Jews is particularly distinct among Jewish communities, both for its Persian-based language and for its frequent use of meat. Most Bukharan Jews left during the Soviet years, and settled in Tel Aviv and New York, where the Forest Hills and Rego Park neighborhoods have large Bukharan communities. Several Bukharan restaurants are found in these neighborhoods, which serve a mix of Central Asian food and Russian dishes picked up during the century of Russian rule. Though strictly kosher and owned by Jews, many Muslim Uzbeks work at these restaurants.
These Bukharan restaurants have a cult following among many non-Bukharan Jews in New York, for the delicious food and their general affordability and good service. (The latter two are unfortunately rare among kosher restaurants in New York.) In addition, many Russian Jewish immigrants come for a taste of home. Central Asian food, including shashlik (kebabs), chebureki (triangular fried pastries), and samsa/samcy (triangular filled buns), became popular throughout the Soviet Union after World War II, and for many Russian Jews “going out for Central Asian” is the equivalent of the American “going out for Chinese.” The menus at Bukharan restaurants are uniformly bilingual in English and Russian.
Traditional Bukharan Jewish food, like all Central Asian food, is meat heavy. There is meat in the soup, meat in the pastries, meat in the rice, and meat generally everywhere. (Vegetarianism is, to say the least, uncommon.) Historically the Jews of Bukhara and Samarkand were one of the few Jewish communities that regularly consumed meat – not just because it was plentiful and cheap, but also because the Jewish community had a regularly available supply of cattle, sheep, and poultry. This matches the generally meat-based diet of the surrounding region, which is desert and not particularly given to vegetable agriculture. It should be noted that this was both unusual for Jewish communities, which reserved meat for more special occasions, and also usual in that this was eating what the neighbors did.
Cheburechnaya is located near the center of Rego Park, on an unassuming side street in Queens. It is close to other Jewish businesses, including two other Bukharan restaurants, a kosher butcher, a kosher supermarket, and a number of other kosher restaurants. Russian, Bukhori, and Hebrew can be heard along the street – alongside Chinese, Spanish, Uzbek, and Arabic. The crowd is a hearty mix: there are Bukharans and Russians, the traditional clientele, along with observant Jews from all over the New York area and foodies from all traditions. At one table, you might have a Bukharan family going out; at another table, some Ashkenazi “bros” reminiscing about their exploits in their college AEPi; at a third, a nerdy civil servant and his friends. Few restaurants in New York, in my experience, are as fun for people-watching.
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This is a cheburek, which is a deep-fried pastry filled with minced meat. It’s incredibly luscious, and the dill often placed in the meat filling provides a lovely balance both to the meat and the heavy fried dough surrounding it. Chebureks are common across the Former Soviet Union, and are especially popular among Tatars. The pastry has a Turkish origin.
Here are three soups: shurpa, lagman, and pelmeni. Shurpa is the traditional vegetable-and-meat soup – it has hearty root vegetables and a big chunk of meat inside! Shurpa comes from the common Turkic word for soups – in Turkish, soup is çorba. Shurpa is delicious. Lagman comes from the other direction, and is a derivative of the Chinese lamian. The Bukharan Jewish version involves noodles in a savory, tomato- and cilantro-laden broth with chunks of beef giving the soup body and a wonderful heartiness. The Forward once rated lagman the best Jewish soup. The last one is the Russian pelmeni, soup with dumplings. Thanks to two centuries of colonization, many parts of Bukharan cuisine and Central Asian food generally are Russian-influenced. The dumplings, however, are derived from those made in Central Asia, where they are called manti.
Here is plov, a rice-and-meat pilaf that makes up for the bulk of Bukharan Jewish festive cuisine. This one is a green plov cooked with many types of herbs. A wide range of plov varieties and recipes exist – I particularly like this sweetish recipe. We also had some meat kebabs, or shashlik, which are also traditional. They were delicious.
Here is noni, the pan-cooked bread of Uzbekistan, eaten by Jews and Muslims alike. The rounds are huge, and torn and shared. The stacks are very attractive and the bread itself is surprisingly soft and pleasant. Not all Jewish breads are like challah!
On past visits, I gobbled them down too quickly to take a picture, so here is another picture of samsa, a beautiful baked and sometimes fried triangular pastry filled with meat or vegetables. The samsa comes from the same origin as the samosa and the sambusak, and filled breads span from empanadas in Spain and Latin America to baozi in China. The pumpkin and meat rendition often served in Bukharan establishments is particularly delicious and irresistible, and if you have any room in your stomach I urge you to try it.
If you want to visit Cheburechnaya, it is located at 9209 63 Drive in Rego Park, Queens. They are certified kosher by an Orthodox rabbi, and closed on Shabbat.
Thank you to Amy Estersohn and Laura Macaddino for accompanying me to have fun at Cheburechnaya most recently! Thanks to Aaron Kaiser-Chen for catching a typo/mistake!
