Food in Tajikistan: My 10 Takeaways Thus Far

As I promised a couple of posts back, here's a post about food in Tajikistan.  Central Asian guidebooks will variously quip that the region isn't a food destination.  It's easy enough to see the truth in this, especially vis-a-vis a Western POV.  From this perspective, there just isn't much diversity, both within the regional cuisine or of international cuisines.  While the Soviets brought much modern innovation to cities here, fine dining wasn't one of them.  Long depressed economies and high import costs are also negative factors too.  Additionally, Central Asia food isn't so different from a lot of Western fare--another legacy of the Silk Road--so it's easy for a Western visitor to make like-for-like comparisons and judge the local food unkindly.

A spread of traditional Tajik food to celebrate Navruz, a roughly 3000-year-old Persian spring equinox holiday.  Photo credit: Illhoms, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

That said, I think there is plenty of tasty food in Tajikistan as well as some interesting things to say about it.  If I didn't think this, I wouldn't be writing this post!  I've given this piece a lot of thought--maybe too much!  I wasn't really sure how to structure it.  I didn't want to just repeat the same information you find in those guidebooks or on Wikipedia. So I settled on a Buzzfeed-esque "top 10" that highlights my major takeaways about food (and drink) thus far in Tajikistan.  It's a bit of cop out, perhaps, but hopefully it makes for some easily digestible reading.  Yep, food pun... Well, here it goes! 

Shashlik (served on some bread).
Photo credit: Allan Grey, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

1. So much rich meat...

Tajik cuisine is extremely meat heavy.  I think this was my first food "takeaway."  The meat is mostly beef and lamb with some chicken.  Pork is nearly impossible to find given that this is a Muslim country.  The meat is local and very rich, with quite a bit of fat.  A little Tajik meat goes a long way!  Suffice to say, the lean meat movement hasn't caught on here.  I'm not a huge meat person but it's very hard not to eat it here, especially if you're going out.  It's good quality and tasty though.  From shashlik (grilled kebabs) to sambusa (generally known in the US as samosa) and osh (more on this later) to fast food burger joints, meat features prominently in some of Tajikistan's most popular foods.  Osh and sambusa are featured in the lead photo.  Here's shashlik, presented on some traditional bread.

2. ...and so few (edible) greens

Leafy greens really aren't a thing here.  There's plenty of Russian-style salads--heavy on pickling and cabbage--however they aren't anchored by greens.  Lettuce is rarely seen, and typically just as a presentation garnish.  Meanwhile I've yet to see kale in a grocery store but it's liberally planted ornamentally in parks.  At least there's cabbage, and plenty of it.  One of the first things I want to do back in the US is grab a meal at one of those upscale suburban salad joints.

3. Bread is everywhere

While meat is abundant and important, bread is ubiquitous and essentially sacred.  Naan, a tandoori-cooked circular flatbread, is a component of every meal.  It's infused with a lot of tradition and superstition--don't leave a loaf sitting upside down! Freshly-made loafs burst from the shelves of every store and street cart and stall.  I think I'm eating more beard than ever.  Here's another gem from Wikimedia.

Photo credit: Steve Evans, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

For the record, one of those ice creams was mine.

4. Sweets, sweets, sweets

Here's another thing I'm having more of.  Sweets are a big deal here.  Every neighborhood in Khujand has at least one if not a handful of cake shops.  Most have an ice cream parlor.  Every grocery store has a candy aisle and a cookie aisle, not to mention a section for sodas.  We like our sweets in the US too, but I think there's even more love here.  I've suspected that, with the relative absence of alcohol (I'll get to this), the "vice void" is filled by sweets.  This is certainly how it works socially.  People in Khujand don't meet for drinks, they meet for cake or ice cream.  Or both!  And here's a food photo I actually took!

5. Tea (and some coffee)

There's meat, naan, and rounding out the holy trinity of Tajik cuisine is tea.  Here, as in many Asian countries, tea drinking is a highly-ritualized affair.  A pot of limon choy (lemon tea) is our go-to beverage any time we eat out, as it is for many other people.  The tea here isn't super strong, so you can drink a lot of it without sending your heart racing.

Coffee certainly can be found here but it's nowhere near as popular as tea and is also quite expensive.  The prices, whether for a bag in a store or a cup at a cafe, are nearly the same as in the US.  Now consider that the Tajik somoni is valued at about 1/10 of the US dollar!  We have coffee for breakfast like good Americans but yes, are also having a whole of tea as well.

6. You can drink other things (including alcohol)

Speaking of alcohol, it can be found and drunk here.  Take this how you want, but questions about alcohol were among the most common questions Anna and I got from friends and family lsat summer before leaving the US.  Tajikistan isn't like Qatar or the UAE, where alcohol is extremely regulated (and very expensive), or Saudi Arabia, where it's illegal.  The Russians brought their drinking culture here and this legacy lives on with cheap Russian beer, wine from other CIS nations (mostly Georgia), and a wide variety of vodkas of various quality.  There aren't many places to buy alcohol, but there's always a decent and relatively affordable selection (alcohol tends to be somewhat cheaper here, especially the vodka).  All in all, it seems that alcohol just isn't that popular.  Most restaurants don't serve it; you BYOB if you want to drink.  My sense is that some people drink occasionally, very few people (almost exclusively men) drink regularly and heavily, and that a large number of people, probably among the more religious, don't drink at all.  As for me, ever globally reliable Heineken has been my drink of choice here.

A bottle of RC Cola. 

With the aforementioned Tajik penitent for sweets, it adds up that soda is very popular here. Pepsi and Coca-Cola products are easy to find, but the local market is, interestingly enough, dominated by a different US brand--RC Cola.  A former giant that's now very niche in the US, RC Cola lives on strong in Tajikistan (and a handful of other seemingly random countries).  RC Cola still proudly declares on its label "Columbus, Georgia, USA" -- but note the absence of any verb!  (It's manufactured domestically in Dushanbe.)  Like sweets and tea, I've probably drank more soda over eight months in Tajikistan than I had in the eight years leading up to coming here.  But hey, at least RC Cola is still made with actual sugar and not corn syrup!

Our water jug.

7. But don't drink the water

The tap water in Khujand is, sadly, very suspect.  Even most locals don't drink it.  It's a shame, because the sources high up in the mountains are pristine.  The city pipes are decidedly not though.  We purchase a pair of 19-liter water jugs about every two weeks for 30 somoni, or a little under three dollars.  I'll send a simple text message--yes, in Russian--in the morning and the water is delivered to our apartment by noon.  

8. Osh

RC Cola, limon choy, or bottled water are all great ways to washdown a meal of osh.  Also known as plov, osh is a national dish, arguably the national dish.  It's fried rice with bits of mutton with chopped carrots, onion and garlic--that's how it's done here at least; there are many regional variants.  Everything is simmered together in a huge pot called a kazan until the rice has absorbed all of the juices and fats.  An osh lunch or dinner is a very traditional way to celebrate an important occasion.  Osh is certainly not bad, but, like with all of the meat, it's an incredibly rich dish.  It really tells you how culturally-important osh is that it is simply the Tajik work for food.

Enjoying osh in a very typical manner: with friends, on a communal plate, and in a traditionally-decorated (or kitschy?  I don't know) private room.

9. Dining out (besides osh)

Mmm, Taj Burger.

Khujand is Tajikistan's second largest city and, appropriately, has what is probably the second best food scene in the country.  As I've mentioned before, it's a relatively wealthy city on the up-and-up with rampant growth and construction, including new restaurants.  There are scores of places with traditional, national food.  They tend to specialize in either osh (like seen in the photo above) or shashlik.  Beyond this, the most popular international cuisine is certainly Turkish.  There's a handful of mid-range to upscale Turkish spots throughout the city.  That said, there's also dozens of pizza houses and burger spots.  I have a real soft spot for Taj Burger, a small local chain and arguably the best fast food in Khujand.  Fried chicken places have a presence too.  

Khachapuri at Omar Khayyam.

Our favorites places have been Omar Khayyam, a relatively eclectic hotel restaurant in the city center, and Urumchi, a Chinese restaurant in between there and our neighborhood.  Omar Khayyam has a typical Tajik menu but then also a small Georgian menu, which has never let us down.  Our favorite is ____.  We stayed at the adjoining Khujand Grand Hotel on our arrival to Khujand last August and Omar Khayyam quickly became a favorite.

Unlike Omar Khayyam, we didn't go to Urumchi until December, after several months of living here.  It's now become as now become one of our regular destinations.  Urumchi--more typically Anglicized as Urumqi is the capital city of the bordering Xinjiang autonomous region, which is roughly half Han and half Uyghur.  There's a handful of Chinese residents here, and even more nationals that visit on business.  I think the people that run this restaurant are Uyghurs, but I'm not sure.  I'd like to learn more about them and what brought them here to Khujand.  As for the food, it's delicious.  It's kind of funny to write this, but one of our favorite dishes is their steamed bok choy.  Discovering this dish after months without lettuce was truly divine.

10. Amazing fresh fruit and nuts

I've been saving my favorite takeaway for last.  In Khujand we are surrounded by the agricultural abundance of the Fergana Valley.  Among the crops grown here are apricots, pomegranates, almonds, and walnuts.  There are others too of course, but these are among the region's best.  It's been pretty great to buy a packet of really tasty walnuts for the equivalent of $1.50 knowing that we'd probably be paying 10 times as much for it back in the US.  This is just one example, I could give many similar ones.  We both joke about sticker shock at food prices being part of our reverse culture shock when we return to the US this summer.  I'll close by simply repeating the photo from the start.  I hope you've enjoyed my 10 takeaways (thus far) on food (and drink) here in Tajikistan.

 Photo credit: Illhoms, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons