Uzbekistan food: plov, samsa, lagman, shashlik and non

Plov: one dish, a different pot in every city

Plov is the dish a host puts in front of a guest: there is a saying in Uzbekistan that guests can leave only after palov has been offered. UNESCO added “Palov culture and tradition” to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016. The dish of rice, meat, spices and vegetables is served as hospitality, at weddings and at New Year, and men and women of any age cook it. People in every Uzbek city are convinced their own plov is the best in the country.

The differences are real. Tashkent has its festive bayram osh, Andijan adds grape-leaf rolls (kovatok palov) and Khiva cooks chalov. Bukhara’s plov is not mixed during cooking and is made only in a copper cauldron, unlike the Tashkent and Andijan versions; Samarkand’s is likewise not mixed, so each diner chooses how much carrot and meat to take. Beshqozon, a Tashkent chain, shows what goes into one pot. Its wedding plov (to’y oshi) is cooked with lamb, beef, carrots, chickpeas, raisins and black pepper, and its zig’ir osh, named for Samarkand, with beef, linseed oil, carrots, raisins and chickpeas.

The portion Beshqozon calls complete (komplekt) adds kazi, a sausage made from horse meat, a boiled quail egg and a dolma of meat and rice wrapped in vine leaves, which turns the plate into a small feast.

Samsa, lagman and shashlik: the meals between plov

Samsa are baked in a clay tandoor oven and usually filled with chopped or minced meat; pumpkin, spinach, potato and chicken fillings also exist, and Chorsu Bazaar’s stalls and small eateries sell them meat-filled. Beshqozon sells a 70 g samsa for UZS 14,000 with beef, onion and fat, UZS 12,000 with chicken, onion and cheese, UZS 14,000 for the “vegetable” samsa, which is filled with peppers and beef, and UZS 10,000 with pumpkin. At 70 g it is a snack, so plan on two or three for a light lunch. Vegetarians can order the pumpkin samsa; plov and the other dishes here are cooked with meat, because Uzbeks eat lamb, beef and horse meat.

Lagman is Uzbekistan’s Central Asian spaghetti: hand-made noodles with meat, vegetables and spices. In the Uzbek kesma version thick boiled noodles come with a gravy of meat and vegetables that usually includes radish, cabbage, potatoes, peppers and tomatoes. Chuzma lagman, the Uyghur version, uses stretched noodles under vegetables and lamb or young veal, and kovurma lagman is fried. Caravan in Tashkent makes its lagman by hand, and small cafés beside Chorsu’s main market building serve lagman alongside pilaf, manti and samsa. For a sit-down lagman or shashlik dinner, allow about UZS 69,000 a person, the mid-range meal estimate below; Caravan publishes no prices.

Shashlik is marinated meat on skewers cooked over an open fire. The classic is tender lamb threaded with small slices of lamb fat (dumba). The other cuts are beef liver (jigar), chicken, beshpanja on five skewers at once and charvi, meat covered with melted fat, while kiyma, skewers of minced lamb, is the local favourite. Chorsu’s stalls sell shish kebabs next to the pilaf, and Caravan, which also cooks plov and shurpa (soup), serves shashlik as a sit-down dinner.

Non and tea: the table around the main dish

Uzbek bread comes in more kinds than the single word suggests: non, patyr, shirmoi-non and katlama. The freshly baked loaves of Chorsu Bazaar are famous.

Samarkand’s loaf has a legend. An emir of Bukhara loved it so much that he tried to have it made at home with Samarkand flour, then Samarkand water, then Samarkand clay for the oven, and finally a baker from Samarkand, and still could not match it. Siab Bazaar, beside the Bibi Khanum Mosque, is where to buy Samarkand bread, halva, dried fruit and nuts.

Tea comes with everything. Guests are greeted with tea and bread, and hot tea follows the meal. In the formal ceremony a bowl of tea is poured back into the pot three times and the fourth is served to the guest; traditions vary by region. Sumalak, halva and chak-chak are the traditional sweets, with ayran and katyk to drink.

Two nights, Tashkent then Samarkand

Two nights fit the Afrosiyob timetable, so book those seats first. The railway’s timetable lists train 766Ф leaving Tashkent at 07:21 and reaching Samarkand at 09:51, which leaves the rest of the day and an evening at Siab Bazaar, which the Registan directorate’s notice of 9 September 2026 lists as open until 24:00. The transport guide covers the trains.

On the Tashkent day, spend the morning at Chorsu Bazaar in the Old Town for samsa and a skewer, have the plov lunch at Beshqozon, which has four branches (Yunusabad, Nurafshon, Glinka and Sergeli), and keep the evening for Caravan. Reserve it first: its website gives the booking number +998 78 150 75 55 and daily opening hours of 11:00 to 02:00. The Tashkent guide covers the sights between meals.

In Samarkand, buy bread at Siab Bazaar and eat on Orzu Mahmudov Street, which the same notice describes as a service street for tourists with 20 places to eat, open round the clock. For a sit-down dinner, Platan at 2 Pushkin Street cooks European and Asian dishes in a 19th-century building protected as an architectural monument; its own site gives daily hours of 10:00 to 01:00 and takes table bookings. The plov stop on this route is the Tashkent lunch at Beshqozon, and Bukhara is the next city to compare. The Samarkand guide has the sights around them.

If the route continues, Khiva adds its green lagman (shivit osh) and Bukhara its copper-cauldron plov. In Bukhara, Old Bukhara at 3 Samarkand Street, within walking distance of Lyabi-Hauz, serves national and European dishes, with Bukhara samsa, kazan-kebab and manti among its best-known plates and a terrace over the old town. In Khiva, Zarafshon Cafe fills the former Tolib Maxsum madrasa inside Itchan Kala and serves plov, shivit oshi and manti, with tables set out on the square below the Islam Khoja minaret on warm evenings.

Carry cash for markets and smaller places. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) says internationally issued cards are not widely accepted outside Tashkent and the main cities, and that very few ATMs outside the main cities accept international cards.

What a day of meals costs

These figures are per person per day. The budget day uses Beshqozon’s online menu as checked on 25 October 2026; the mid-range and comfort days are estimates. Pound figures use the central-bank reference rate of 23 October 2026 as shown on Ipoteka Bank’s page, GBP 1 = UZS 15,916.89. A room rate that includes breakfast lowers each total; the Uzbekistan trip cost guide sets food inside a whole-trip budget.

• Budget, about UZS 150,000 (about £9): two meat samsa for breakfast (UZS 28,000), two 450 g plov portions (UZS 104,000) and tea and water (UZS 18,000).
• Mid-range, an estimate of about UZS 225,000 (about £14): three sit-down meals at about UZS 69,000 each, the price of Beshqozon’s complete plov portion, plus UZS 18,000 for drinks.
• Comfort, an estimate of about UZS 350,000 (about £22): three meals at about UZS 100,000 each in a table-service restaurant, plus UZS 50,000 for drinks.