Kyrghz Kazak restaurant, Camberwell
At the risk of damning it with faint praise, this has to be one of the most interesting restaurants in Camberwell. It is in the back of the Pasha Hotel and is worth visiting as a quiet but completely OTT oasis on the Walworth Road. The decor is, well, stunning.
The food is interesting too. We started with complimentary hummus served with rhomboids of what tasted like fried dough. Very good indeed.
My soup, (sapar, I think) consisted of thin broth with a large hunk of lamb on the bone, a potato and a carrot. Not great, should have stuck to the borscht. The other starter was marinaded herring with carrot, beetroot and sour cream. Pretty good too.
"Pasha special" is essentially a mixed grill main course with crispy noodles and sour cream. Ok, but a little overdone for my taste. The other main was a boiled dough and lamb/mutton dish with onions. Hearty and delicious.
Turkish coffee and baklava, both fine. Complete with a bottle of house red, just under fifty quid for two.
Probably not worth travelling down from North London to visit, but a great place to take visitors if you live locally. I will be going back. Don't be put off by the website - it is much better than it looks or sounds.
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Thanks for this! It's on the list as we attempt to eat our way round Central Asia in advance of our Mongolian jaunt this month. Can you remember what else was on the menu? And was the wine Georgian? Do you think we'd need to book?
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re: helen b
Lots of Turkish/Russian cold starters. If they were as good as the hummus then worth ordering. I honestly can't remember much of the rest, as mains were either Turkish things I recognised or competely unfamiliar. The wine we drank was a passable French red, and at £9.50 a bottle, a bargain. Fine dining this ain't.
I booked, and they asked if we wanted to sit at a table or on traditional rugs. We opted for the table. The only they didn't check was my name. When we got there, the hotel receptionist asked if we had a booking for the restaurant, and when we said yes, he replied "In that case, you may pass." "Do you know where our restaurant is?" "No? Just follow the red carpet past the hammam and the beauty parlour, all the way to the end."
Lots of empty tables the (Tuesday) night we were there. Probably no need to book, just tell the receptionist you have.
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re: helen b
I was there yesterday: to answer your questions in reverse order: Booking probably not necessary on most occasions (unless they have some kind of special event on), as the restaurant is relatively large and in a rather obscure location. On a saturday night (albeit one with a World cup game) there were probably 3 or 4 tables empty for every one occupied.
There is Georgian wine: at least two reds: Kvanchkara (£25 a bottle) - highly regarded, but very sweet and thick, and another one the name of which I forget for £16. But a fair number of other choices too.
The food is a real mixture of Russian- and Turkic- influenced things, as well as a few specifically Central Asian things (like plov, and that Kazakh dish - is it called Bashbarmak or something like that - that is a mixture of beef and rather-pasta like dough) (maybe if there was thing that the Soviet Union acheived, it was to bring dill across the entire Eurasian land mass). some good salads (a mention of note to the Korean carrot salad - another Soviet-spread dish) and side-dishes/starters to (aubergine caviar a.k.a baklajanaya ikra of special note)
And so much else more: the menu is surprisingly extensive. And though the link to the menu on their website doesn't work, the restaurant's facebook page, if you can find it, does give a complete (and I think up-to-date) menu.
The staff were really helpful and friendly. We did have the suspicion that when our table were the only people left in the main room that they changed the music from Russian (and then Turkish) pop to late 80s English/US pop for our benefit! But that small point apart, pretty satisfying place to spend an evening
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