Good morning.
I hope you're having an amazing day.
It's Mark Wiens.
I'm in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
And we just arrived about four, we landed at the airport about four hours ago.
So this is my first time to visit.
I'm excited to be here.
Today we are going to go on an Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbek food tour.
I'm gonna meet up with Bec Cruz.
He's the one who invited us here with the Ministry of Tourism.
This is gonna be my very first day to ever eat Uzbekistan food, and I'm gonna share it all with you in this video.
How are you?
Good, how are you?
Thank you, how are you?
Welcome to Tuscan Mark.
He's an awesome food blogger here.
And we are on our way to start eating.
We are in Chigatai.
Chigatai is the heart of the old city.
And all the people, within Tashkent especially, they come here exclusively for bread.
I can smell the bread already right here.
We're starting off for breakfast here and this is an entire bazaar dedicated to bread, and just the aroma of the bread smells incredible.
You can see the sesame seeds.
They're like these giant rings of bread.
They almost look like baby carriages that they roll the bread in. babies of bread.
I can't wait to taste it.
It smells so good.
Two words to learn when you come to Uzbekistan, , which is hello, which is a greeting, which is similar to Arabic, and , Rahmat means thank you.
So those are words we're gonna be using throughout this trip in Uzbekistan.
We're gonna gather some things for breakfast and have my very first breakfast in Uzbekistan.
So early morning they milk the cow, assalamu alaikum, assalamu alaikum.
Yeah, we got a little portion of our khamak.
I made sure that it is very fresh.
Yes, great.
This is called gyupka, which literally means thin.
And you can see a carrot fried with oil, and you see mutton, usually minced meat.
Oh, wow.
Oh, wow.
You can smell that immediately.
Like the honey.
Yeah.
Oh, it's so juicy.
The aroma, it's so fragrant.
Oh, wow.
Oh.
That has to be the juiciest melon I've ever tasted.
And so like honey.
That's crazy juicy, huh?
It's like drinking an entire cup of juice in every single bite.
So the water runs down.
We bought all the stuff at the market, and then we walked over right next door to the market.
It's a restaurant, but it's also like a community gathering space.
If you can notice, we're actually sitting above a stream, a small river that flows underneath us.
Oh man, you can smell the onions and the carrots, that bread, the grapes kaimak, everything we bought.
We're about to dig in for this breakfast. at this feast.
Ah, yeah, it's so huge.
So big, so you can see all the layer, you can see the dough.
So it's all cooked in the tandoor?
Tandoor, yeah, yeah, the bread, best bread cooked in tandoor.
Ah, I want to try, what?
I'm gonna grab some of the bread, and wow, that's actually like really dense bread.
We've all got our own bowls of the kaimak.
You kinda just dip it in.
Very thick and creamy.
Oh wow.
Good?
Mm, the bread is so fresh.
And then the kai mak is like a really creamy, almost like whipped butter in taste and texture.
Wash it down with tea.
Oh yeah, just soothing.
It just goes so well.
Dip into some more of this kai mak.
Just on its own like that.
I'm gonna try one of the figs.
Break it in half.
You can just feel the juices just squeezing out.
Oh, wow.
Squeeze it together.
Squeeze it together.
Oh, and yeah, you can see the pulpiness just kinda, and the sugar's just coming together.
Squeeze it together.
And that just brings out the juices and the natural.
That is just natural jam in fruit skin.
Just crazy good.
It is, it's like pudding.
So you can see it's a very thin dough, and then you can see that she smeared on this mixture of minced meat and carrot.
That is just delicious.
That's almost like a carrot jam smeared within this savory It's just the beginning.
It is just a breakfast.
That was a fantastic way to start this Tashkent food tour.
Yeah, the bread in the morning, so soothing.
Oh man, and that fruit, so sweet, so juicy.
We are moving on.
I think we're going to the main, one of the main biggest bazaars now to eat a few signature dishes.
Bye bye.
We just drove down the road to Chorso Bazar.
This is the biggest and the oldest bazaar marketplace in Tashkent.
We're gonna walk around here, we're gonna eat some more food and especially, You can even see the smoke.
Oh, yeah.
On the outskirts of the market, people are selling things like melons, peanuts, nuts, dried fruit.
We're moving into the smoke.
I can smell the meat.
You can smell the meat.
It's a beef, it's a kebab, a lot of things going on here.
Oh, there it is.
The kebabs are sizzling all over the place.
So many unique things.
Check out this sausage.
There's meat grilling.
I mean, there's such a mix, such an influence from so many different places, because Uzbekistan is on the Silk Road and so there's such a mix of influence, but there's so many unique things in this region as well.
As-salamu alaykum.
Samusa.
Oh, this is the samusa here.
Med samusa.
Ah, okay.
Med samusa.
Okay.
Original.
Lasagna.
Oh, this is the spot.
This is the spot?
This is the spot.
So, Chorsu has many varieties of the food.
Local people, if you pay attention there, they can't eat anything.
They take over this world.
This is what it is.
She has been making this dish for 25 years right here at the market.
It's kind of like a lasagna, but you can see it's tomato sauce, but at the same time it's almost like a dumpling, because there's like little self-contained little pockets.
Some chilies.
She puts it onto the plate she scoops on.
It looks like onions and dill onto the top and with the chili on the side.
And then this is kind of a big food court section.
It's packed right now.
We're coming to the back here to sample it.
Big communal tables.
You can smell the aroma of the smoke.
Oh, this is beautiful.
We've got two little dumplings and then topped with onions and you can smell that dill.
I would love to taste this chili too.
Maybe chase it with the chili.
But I will open one of these guys, get some of the onions.
Look at the inside of it.
Oh, what's on the inside?
Kind of like matchstick cut potatoes which are filled onto the inside.
Thank you very much.
Call it dope.
It has actually very, really good meaning.
If you can give me for one moment, I'll explain you.
Yeah, sure.
So this is a chili sign, chili pepper sign.
Oh, chili pepper sign.
Yeah.
The sign says it protects from the evil eye.
Wow.
The chili sign from four sides.
Uzbek men used to wear them so they are protected from evil eye from all sides.
We call it doppel, national doppel.
Can we wear it like that?
Yes.
Yeah.
So do you wear it to the side or do you wear it to the, however you like?
Okay.
Yeah, however you like.
Looks good.
Okay, that's even better with the chili, the chilies.
Thank you, thank you very much.
Back to the dumplings, and yeah, you can see they are filled with potato.
The burst of flavors.
We've got the gummy wrapper, we've got the potatoes in there, tomato sauce and then the crispy onions and the dill.
Chew it up, make sure you chew it up well.
Oh yeah.
So good, so good.
I love it, yeah.
That goes up your nose a little bit.
Oh, it's wonderful and it's just maybe very lightly pickled.
Oh, what do we have next?
It's so solid, it's so dense, and you can feel kind of a crusty, oily-ness.
I'm not even sure what's on the inside.
Oh, there's meat and kind of like a lump in there.
This is a lamb fat.
Back of our sheep.
Our sheep has a big butt.
This is a next level samosa.
I'm gonna try to get a little bit of that fat in this bite.
Okay, let me navigate my bite.
Oh, wow.
Oh, wow.
That just melts with, it's just pure lamb oil.
It just melts.
You taste a little bit of spice in there, like maybe a little bit of cumin, but just liquid lamb.
Okay, I mean, that's just a live, jiggly piece of fat, but wow, that is umami flavor at its best.
Oh, and it just fell out.
Oh, I gotta save it.
She liked, how much you liked it, and she's refusing to get money.
Oh, she's saying it's on me.
I like the way they like their guests we respect.
So this is the true hospitality.
Oh man, and just, we have been now in tashkent in uzbekistan for a total of like 12 hours and so far everybody that we've met has been so friendly, so generous, so hospitable.
Uh it's, It's a beautiful culture.
That food was incredibly good.
When you come to the market here, when you come to the bazaar, come to meet her.
She is an amazing lady.
This is all cheese.
We call it .
It's kind of cheese.
So it's very tender, I believe you may get it.
It has like a little bit of a yogurt cheese kind of aroma to it.
Oh wow.
Oh, that's delicious.
It has, it's like, it's sour, tastes like yogurt, but it's salty, condensed, and almost like yolky.
We have our local basilic.
It's really nice.
You gotta try it.
Mmm.
Oh, you immediately taste the basil.
And then that's like a crunchy, it's like rock yogurt, but like, whoa.
This whole part is still the bazaar.
Like the outside area, indoor sections.
This lemon grown in Tashkent.
Wow.
Very refreshing.
Try it.
Mmm.
Oh, the juiciness.
That's just like a pool, a puddle of lemon juice.
The skin was kind of thick, more like leathery than I thought.
Oh yeah, that's sour.
This is a shot of mulberry juice.
Very nice.
Even though it doesn't contain alcohol, it will warm us in the friendship.
Yes.
This is mulberry, a shot of fresh mulberry juice.
In the bazaar, yeah.
One, two, go.
Oh, it's incredible.
Oh, maybe also because we had that lemon in our mouth.
That like magnifies the flavor.
Perfectly sweet, sour, that was really, really good.
We really are here at one of the best times in Uzbekistan, because it's fruit season and so everything is fresh and there's just mounds of raspberries and grapes and figs.
Whereas if you come here in different, like winter for instance well, people buy the fresh fruit now and then they preserve them for periods of cold when you cannot get the fresh fruits.
So it's great to be here at this time to just see the abundance and the vibrancy of the natural ingredients.
We've emerged from the fruits and vegetables section to one of the most iconic sites of the bazaar, which is a dome-shaped structure which we're gonna go inside, we're gonna see inside.
And what I like also about this bazaar is that it's busy, it's vibrant, but at the same time it's still calm and friendly.
I mean, people are so friendly.
You still have space to breathe and walk around and roam around.
As soon as we entered the dome, you can smell the aroma of the fresh meat and this is the the meat section of this dome.
But it's so cool.
You step inside design is almost like a web on the dome and then there's an opening at the top.
It's designed this way for the heat, but also just as an icon.
It's so spacious also because of the height of the dome, and you can hear just the sounds kind of echoing.
I don't think I've ever seen raw meat being sold in such a cool, such a museum-like structure.
It's beautiful.
Oh, those are the spices you can smell.
And then we just came up the stairs and check out this view of the market floor.
It almost looks like a, you know what it reminds me of?
It reminds me of like a stock exchange.
It's like a stock exchange.
It's so, it really is.
This has to be one of the coolest markets in the world.
It feels like you're in a museum and yet it's live.
It's a living museum of food.
It's beautiful.
We're heading out of the market and we gotta rush a little bit because we're going to this lunch spot where we're gonna see they serve a huge what is probably the national dish food of Uzbekistan.
Yeah, it's perfect.
You can still kind of... Back into the van, we're on our way to the TV tower for lunch.
Yeah, everyone is for plov.
Those cars... All of these cars?
Yes.
All of those cars.
Even our national football team.
Look, our national football team is coming to eat plov.
That's the national football team?
Yes.
Really?
There you go.
They're having lunch.
Literally, for the last kilometer, we've been passing cars parked on the side of the street.
They're all coming to eat what we're about to eat.
That's the national dish.
It is national.
It's a staple.
Plov is a wedding.
Plov is a period.
Plov is a birthday.
Plov is everything.
Any occasion we have, we want to celebrate, we celebrate with a plov.
That's all you need to know.
Come to the base of the TV tower.
It's almost over.
You can't even call that a pan or a pot.
It literally is a swimming pool of plov.
It's almost finished.
There's just a little bit of oil at the bottom and by a little bit of oil that's like a tub of oil at the bottom and you're still scooping out some of the rice.
That was a big one, and unfortunately, it ran out.
This is just like a bathtub instead of a swimming pool.
I put it onto a plate and over there they're chopping up meat and it looks like you kind of get into a queuing system.
You order your kebab, you order your plates and then they dish it out for you.
Smells unbelievable.
If you could smell the meat aroma back here, it is my nostrils are just.
I can actually feel a layer of meat on my nostrils.
Look at it.
So there is like three portions in one.
This is for three people.
So you see this is a kazu.
This is horse meat that I was telling you about.
It's the horse sausage.
Sausage, exactly.
And we have a quail egg.
We have ordinary egg.
And you see just the pile of the meat.
I think there's more meat than the rice itself.
I can't think of another word other than epic.
Epic food adventure.
Wow.
Huge.
Everybody in here is eating what we just saw.
It's for sure a thousand people in here.
It's a huge dining hall area.
Oh, are we going upstairs? and we're gonna sit upstairs so we have a view of everybody.
How many thousand kilos did you say the pilaf they serve here per day, please?
1.5 tons altogether.
Altogether.
During the lunch time in two hours.
Look at it.
And it's gone.
I hope it's okay with you.
Very okay for us.
It's like an equal ratio of meat to rice.
Marhammat.
Marhammat.
Marhammat.
Bon appetit.
First bite usually the elder begins, and then guests, and then we can all dig in.
But the meat you got, the rice, it's so fluffy you can smell that oil.
Oh wow, the rice is fluffy and then it is coated in like meat juices and oils and the rice is not sweet, but then you've got the sweet like dried raisins in there.
And you've got so many different textures in there.
You've got the rice, which is almost like al dente.
You've got the starchy chickpeas, you've got the silky carrots, and I gotta try the sausage.
Next up for the sausage, it's a special sausage, it's horse sausage.
It has kind of like a salted preserved taste to it a little bit.
Follow that with some of the salad.
It's amazing.
Oh yeah.
It's like those yogurt balls that we had earlier.
Just the fresh version, well, not really fresh, but the non-hardened version.
That provides like a totally different cooling sensation to your mouth.
Yeah, spectacular.
And washing it down with lemon tea and kind of sweet and you can just taste that undertone of lemoniness.
That was one of those meals that's just filled me with an almost it's like almost a speechless to the brim with a speechless overjoy.
In like two to three hours, they sell out of one and a half tons of rice and meat.
Empty, empty, empty, empty.
There's the last one is just a little bit.
But it is time for a little stroll after the amount of food and quantity and meatiness and deliciousness of the food that we've eaten today.
But I was just even reflecting.
On the morning We went to the market, which was literally like a museum, and then that restaurant that we just ate at for the pilaf I don't think I can describe it any better way than an opera house of meat and rice.
This is one of the main square, one of the main gathering areas of Tashkent.
But before we get there, we're just walking through this beautiful lush park.
Look at these trees, big trees, evergreens, flowers.
It's so green and lush. and now we're in the artist section.
Oh, you see, I'm seeing some art, some antiques, lots of paintings.
Micah.
Taking a video?
Okay, run Micah.
The jumping castle in Tashkent.
I have definitely built up an appetite going up that hill and sliding down.
I think we can, we're ready to eat again.
Hello.
Prashant.
Nice to meet you, Mark.
Mark, hello.
Hello.
How are you?
Very good.
Welcome to Uzbekistan.
Thank you very much.
I was talking to you about, they sold everything and this is what remains.
Okay.
More of a Slavic background.
The next stop on this Tashkent Uzbek food tour today we've come to.
It's kind of like a family restaurant.
They have a bunch of local dishes.
This is what we came for.
Another dish, specific dish that we've come here to eat is naren, which is a dish that I've been really looking forward to trying just since I learned about it today.
She has a very thin dough which she slices into very fine like juliennes.
Then you move over to this station where she's finely chopping up a mixture of horse meat and beef and that mixes into the dish.
And then I think it gets assembled over at station number three, so she takes an equal amount of meat plus the julienne dough.
Now she's just mixing it fully.
She added in some seasoning some local cumin, some black pepper, a little bit of oil and it's just fully mixing it, so that it's completely even tossing it.
Wow.
This is a soup in which the horse sausage was brewed.
You gotta eat this with your fingers.
That's the traditional way, but just a mound of what she mixed up with her fingers the dough, the julienned dough, the mixed in meat, the thick chunks of horse sausage, and then there's some onions on top.
So I'll grab, you can see the pepper in there too.
Oh nice, oh that's beautiful, I can't wait to try it.
Mmm, wow.
That's awesome.
You've got like, mmm.
They are kind of like noodles, but it almost has like a cheese texture to it.
And then you've got that meat mixed in, it's oily.
You've got that light spice, the pepper in there, the light cumin.
And then again, you can really like taste the meat.
So far today In the dishes, the meat-based dishes we've had, the meat just comes in so vibrantly flavorful but so natural tasting.
It's a fat.
Horse, it's horse fat.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah, it's like.
It's really meaty and it is like a sausage, like kind of like salty, almost like a salami.
It's so succulent.
This is the soup that the horse sausage was boiled in.
It has this like saltiness.
It's a little bit sourish.
It's powerful.
Yeah, that's good.
Really, really good.
Some of the boiled meat and rice, which has just turned into a paste.
You can see the fibers in it.
Grains and rice and you can see the fibers in there.
But it's all just boiled, simmered down for like half a day, for like 11 or 12 hours, until it just turns into a paste of porridge.
It's like a, very like comforting.
You've got like a foamy, almost foamy texture to it.
And again, you taste that meat.
Okay, next up for the lamb sausage and this is like a, it's pretty hardcore.
You can see the fat just laced within it.
It's a mix of organs as well, and then wrapped up into an intestine and it's just dripping in oily meaty juices.
Oh wow.
Yeah, that's like fatty, juicy.
Yeah, it's pretty good, but that's meaty.
Some of the lamb chop.
Oh yeah.
It's delicious, it's so tender.
That piece was kinda lean, or at least in comparison to the last bite I had.
And this one is the dolma.
There's cabbage, and there might be grape leaves in here as well, but then rice and meat on the inside.
And the dill in there.
Oh, that's what makes it, that's what brings it to the next level.
Moving through the meats, next up are the kebab.
Oh wow.
Yep, that's meat umami.
Taste the smokiness of it, how it's been, and the saltiness as well, how it's just been scorched over the hot coals.
It was all good, but that horse noodle like dough dish with the soup and that is.
That is unique and just it's Incredibly good.
It's all man.
It's good.
We're gonna go back to the hotel, We're gonna rest for a couple hours And then we have one more meal to complete this.
First, my very first day in Uzbekistan.
It's been Yeah, it's been nothing short of just impressive, impressive and met so many friendly people, so much good food.
Okay, all that to say we have one more big dinner coming up.
Wow.
This, okay, we went back to the hotel.
We rested for about an hour.
It's a very modern but very nice, very beautiful restaurant with modern Uzbekistan style.
And we're eating a dish, it's called .
Look at this platter.
It's a beauty.
It's another stunner.
And if you can notice, right in the center, you will see the horse sausage that we've already eaten once or twice or three times today.
You guys hungry?
Oh yeah, look at it.
I can't wait to try.
Sausage, that's like one of the winning meats of the day.
It's like sheets, sheets of what look kind of like dough.
Okay, and then I got some horse meat on there as well, of course.
Mmm.
Mmm.
Mmm.
Oh, that's incredible.
Those are like noodle sheets.
You've got that really meaty broth that the noodles have sort of soaked up with.
That horse meat, which is salty and like horse salami.
And then the crispness of the green onions.
What do you think, what is the main ingredient in this?
What is the main ingredient?
The noodle.
Or the dough.
No.
No?
And it's not even the meat.
Not even the meat?
It's the broth.
The broth.
And every now and then, like in this bite, you get a cumin seed.
Like a whole cumin seed, but it's kind of mild.
This has been one of those days that just blows me away and I'm still trying to process the food, the culture.
We landed about Okay, actually less than 24 hours in Tashkent.
Slept for like two and a half three hours, then immediately got started on this ultimate Tashkent food tour.
Truly a learning and just a beautiful, beautiful day.
I loved the food.
I loved the different dishes, dishes I'd never seen or even imagined before.
But even more than the food, the people, the hospitality, the friendliness and genuine kindness.
So many people that we met today is what really shines, is what really stands out.
So I want to say a huge thank you to the Ministry of Tourism Uzbekistan, who invited Ying and I to Uzbekistan.
Thank you so much for making this happen.
Thank you to Bekruz.
Bekruz arranged everything.
He did a lot of work to make this happen.
So thank you so much.
And to Akbar and also to Rashvan for coming along with us today.
Ah man, what an amazing day we had.
This was just day one of Uzbekistan.
We have so much more food, adventures and experiences in Uzbekistan that I'm gonna share with you in this entire series.
So stay tuned and be sure to watch this entire series.
I'm gonna say goodnight, I'm going straight to bed, and I will see you on the next video.
Thanks so much for watching.
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