乌兹别克斯坦美食路线
Plov, bread, bazaars and teahouses across four regions.
Route line
Plan before departure
Chorsu: the market under the blue dome where the Silk Road meets Soviet modernism
Tashkent's main bazaar trades at the same crossroads it did a thousand years ago — but under a giant dome that became a monument in its own right. Here you buy spices and plov, and along with them the frozen spirit of two eras.
Uzbek Plov: How One Dish Became a Map of the Country
In Uzbekistan there's no such thing as "just plov." From whether it's light or dark, the vegetables fried or steamed, whether there are raisins in it, a local will tell you unerringly which city you're from. Plov here isn't a recipe — it's a way of reading...
Uzbek Non: The Bread You Can't Turn Over
A round flatbread with a pattern in the center looks like simple bread — until you lay it upside down. In Uzbekistan the non has a code of rules: it isn't cut with a knife, isn't laid bottom up on the table, and is broken by hand. Bread here is almost a...
The Chaikhana: Why Everything in Uzbekistan Is Settled Over a Bowl of Tea
Pour someone a full bowl of tea and you're politely asking them to leave. Pour a third, and you're glad of them and want them to stay. In the Uzbek chaikhana, tea long ago stopped being a drink: it's the language in which hospitality, respect and...
What to Eat in the Ferghana Valley: A Food Guide
The Ferghana Valley is the most fertile and densely populated part of Uzbekistan, hemmed in by mountains in the east of the country. Tourists reach it less often than Samarkand and Bukhara — quite wrongly. For understanding Uzbek cuisine, Ferghana is the...
What to Eat in Samarkand: A Food Guide
Samarkand astonishes with more than the Registan. It has its own plov — light, made on linseed oil — its own flatbread that doesn't go stale for weeks, and the Siab Bazaar selling the very things people ate on this land two thousand years ago. The city is...