Silk Way, a new Kazakh family-owned restaurant in Queen Village, offers a delicious culinary tour throughout Central Asia, writes Ali Mohsen for Billy Penn at WHYY.
Owner, Olzhas Karymsakov, opened the eatery with some starting support from his family, who own a restaurant and three spas with attached kitchens in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
The menu is a true celebration of Central Asian cuisines.
“Kazakhstan is a mixed place with a lot of ethnicities and cultures and nationalities, and our kitchen represents that,” said Karymsakov.
The menu includes everything from Uzbek salads, such as pepper-and-tomato achuchuck, to Uyghur specialties, including lagman made with house-made hand-pulled noodles, and much more.
The goulash offers Hungarian flavors, while the lyulya kebab is influenced by Armenian cuisine. Other highlights include plov and spiced cutlets, dumplings and stuffed pastries, vegetable samsas, chebureks, and Georgian meat-and-spiced stuffed khinkals.
Beverages include black, green, and lemon teas, ayran, and a boiled fruit compot.
Karymsakov’s father, Bakytzhan, set much of the menu, drawing inspiration from the kitchens he oversees in Almaty. The entire family — including mother Aigul and younger brother Nyko — arrived to help out with the first weeks of the eatery.
Read more about the Silk Way and its Central Asian cuisine in Billy Penn at WHYY.
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Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on PHILADELPHIA Today in September 2024.
