Sydney Uyghur Cuisine – Dinner – Surry Hills

I’m always up for trying new things and I’d walked past this restaurant several times with a mind to go in next time I’m around for dinner. I’ve had Chinese food before (who hasn’t?), but not from this muslim ethnic group in China (and other areas in Central Asia). That means there will be no sweet & sour pork on the menu.

First up, how to pronounce Uyghur? We ask the waiter of this family restaurant and he says ‘wee-gur’.

The decor is very bright

The menu looks interesting – if you’re having a party, you can get a Putun koy tomur kawapi (whole lamb kebab) for $398.

The decor of the restaurant & the design of the menu cover seem a bit mismatched to me but that’s never really been my concern – for me, it’s always all about the food.

We order a couple of dishes, a few with recommendations from the waiter and a few because they sounded interesting. It was a bit of a wait to get our first dish, but that’s because this restaurant has a tendency to bring all ordered dishes at the one time…

In no time, our table was covered in various plates – obviously, I’d prefer a more staggered entry.

Goshnan – $12

AKA special meat pie 😉 Actually, it is a meat pie with in a special Uyghur pastry. Crisp pastry & tasty filling – I could eat it at a footy game 😉

Kuruh korma lahman – $12

The menu could use a few more descriptors – for nearly every Lahmanlar (hand-made noodle dish) listed, the description is along the lines of noodles with meat & vegetables. We decided to get a recommendation from the waiter and this dish is described as dried fried noodles with meat & vegetables.

Manta – $12.50

These are quite large steamed dumplings. I kinda expected them to have reused the same filling as in paramash, but they haven’t – this dumpling contains a different lamb mix. I like chefs that aren’t lazy. Juicy mince inside, add a little bit of the chilli paprika sauce and it’s darling

Tawa Kawap – $25

I’m thinking we should have been a bit more selective with our dishes – we chose so much lamb but it’s so tasty that I can’t help it. Here we have some stir-fried lamb on top of bread. The sauce isn’t too rich and the lamb just falls apart. There are a few bits of marrow bone floating around which is snapped up by my other dining companions.

Cold Jelly Salad – $8

I was feeling a bit of meat imbalance so I wanted to try a salad that I hadn’t encountered before. This was really refreshing, it wasn’t spicy but you could taste the smokey paprika in the dressing. The jelly texture was quite firm and the jelly itself had very subtle flavour but it was a good palette cleanser before more meat.

Paramash – $12.50

We go for the special fried paramash. Another delicious lamb mince meal, the bun is so tasty and has absorbed the juices from the meat filling and the filling is delicious.

Piyaz poshkal – $7

I’m not much of a strategic orderer but even I start to realise we’ve ordered heaps of bready/pastry foods. This time we’ve got some of their onion bread which reminds me a bit of chinese style spring onion pancakes. Again, very moorish – all the dishes we’ve had have been moorish. Bread is not hard and the onions add a sweetness to it – tasty.

This is a lovely, little place with a mom & pop feel to it. The dishes are home-style and very tasty and most definitely good value for money. I’ve been here several times and would go back again.

The lowdown:

The good – food & value

The bad – nothing

The mediocre – bringing all dishes out at once overcrowds the table somewhat. I’ve been there more than once and it’s happened each time.

The interesting – the decor but at least the yellow is half-pastel otherwise it would hurt my eyes 😉

Details:

Sydney Uyghur Cuisine
314 Cleveland St
Surry Hills NSW

Tel: 0406 002 461 (bookings not required – unless you were after the $398 whole lamb)