Food is one of the best parts of a trip to Uzbekistan, and every city has its own favourites. Here are the dishes our guides recommend most often.

Plov — the national dish

Rice cooked in a huge iron pot (kazan) with carrots, onions and meat, often with chickpeas, raisins or quail eggs. Every region makes it differently, and locals argue happily about whose is best. Plov is traditionally a lunch dish — many plov centres cook in the morning and sell out by early afternoon, so plan for it at midday.

Samsa

Flaky pastry filled with meat and onion (or pumpkin in season), baked against the wall of a clay tandyr oven. Best eaten hot, straight from the oven.

Lagman and shurpa

Lagman is a hand-pulled noodle dish, served as a soup or stir-fried with vegetables and meat. Shurpa is a clear, slow-cooked soup with large pieces of vegetables and meat — welcome on a cold day.

Shashlik

Skewers grilled over charcoal — lamb, beef, chicken or minced meat — served with raw onion and bread. You will smell the grills long before you see them.

Non — the bread

Round bread with a stamped pattern in the centre, baked in a tandyr. Bread is treated with respect: it is broken by hand, never thrown away and never placed upside down. Samarkand bread is famous across the country.

Regional specialities

  • Khiva: shivit oshi, bright green noodles made with dill, served with a meat and vegetable stew and yoghurt; and tuxum barak, delicate egg-filled dumplings.
  • Bukhara: the old town's teahouses and courtyards around Lyabi-Hauz, and a Bukhara-style plov that many locals love.
  • Samarkand: its dense, glossy bread and Samarkand-style plov.
  • Tashkent: the widest choice of all — a good place to try plov at a big plov centre and to explore Chorsu bazaar.

Tea, bazaars and sweets

Green tea is served with almost every meal; black tea is common too. At the bazaar, try dried apricots, roasted apricot kernels, nuts, halva and navat (crystallised sugar). In summer and autumn, the melons and grapes are exceptional.

Vegetarian travellers

Uzbek cooking is meat-centred, but you will not go hungry: salads, pumpkin samsa, vegetable soups, bread, yoghurt and fruit are easy to find. Tell us when you enquire and your guide will suggest places and help you order.

A practical note

Lunch is included on our full-day tours. Tastings and other meals are paid on the spot, and your guide will happily take you to good, honest local places and explain the menu.