Bukharian cuisine has arrived with Cafe Chenar
We have some very deeply ingrained, romantic notions of what Mom and Pop immigrant cuisine should be.
That can be a problem. Budding restaurateurs can find themselves dogged by questions of “authenticity,” hamstrung by unfair and illogical price expectations, or shoved into an antiquated “ethnic food” pigeonhole that food media historically treats like the second string. We need to be vigilant in reminding ourselves that not every immigrant-run restaurant is a cheap, cozy hole-in-the-wall serving homestyle cuisine that has arrived on our shores, having been passed down for generations in the mother country. But hey, if the shoe fits...
Cafe Chenar, a kosher-certified Bukharian restaurant at 16th Street and Bell Road in Phoenix, cheerfully embraces the old-school archetype. In August, Mazal and Natan Uvaydov opened the small, friendly place to share their heritage — the Jewish cuisine of Uzbekistan. Since opening in 2016, Tratto, Chris Bianco’s trattoria, has helped set the pace for Italian fare in Phoenix. But among the 5-star restaurant’s Arizona-flecked creations, one of the simplest — a classic pillar of Roman cuisine — has proven to be a popular favorite. ❚ This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The cacio e pepe at Tratto is a killer dish.
The Bukharian diaspora
Though the Valley has long been home to an expatriate Bukharian community, Mazal Uvaydov — who arrived in 1996 — insists she has never known Phoenix to have a Bukharian restaurant. But whether Cafe Chenar is the first or one of the first, this is not a culinary subgenre that has received a lot of play. In New York, it’s another story. The break-up of the Soviet Union saw a mass and near-total emigration of Bukharian Jews, who settled primarily in Israel and Queens. The Uvaydovs also initially moved to New York before settling in Arizona, where Mazal’s son, Natan, has opened a pair of kosher restaurants — Labella Pizzeria in Phoenix and Kitchen 18 in Scottsdale — neither of which offers Bukharian cuisine.
That’s something Mazal wanted change.
The good news for the Uvaydovs is that Bukharian is almost as approachable as it is obscure. Isolated from the world’s Jewish community for centuries, Bukharian Jews developed a cui- to
sine rooted in the traditions of Russia and central Asia, along with elements brought by traders who traveled the Silk Road. But as wild as the combination sounds, for a mainstream American diner, there’s little not to like about dumplings, pickled vegetables, grilled meats, and freshly-baked breads.
A warm and hearty beginning
At the peak of the dinner rush, Mazal bounces from table to table, a bubbly, blushing matron with her hair tied back in a floral scarf. She starts cooking at 10 a.m., moves to the front of the house when it’s time to serve dinner, and somehow summons the energy to pause and chat with every guest. I’ve met hummingbirds with less verve.
Cafe Chenar is a low-budget operation, but the Uvaydovs have taken pains to bring an air of refinement to a small, humble storefront. It’s a modern room with a whiff of Old World elegance — a little gilding here, a little filigree there. The teapot is ornate and the tea is scalding, though the warmth of the staff is what’s striking.
Bread feels like a good way to start. The piroshki ($3) are springy specimens, a substantial puff of elastic fried dough with a smooth potato filling. Belyash ($3), its meaty cousin, subs in gently-seasoned ground beef, and a similar meat filling constitutes the core of the samsa ($4), tucked into a clamshell-shaped pastry — made without butter, in accordance with kosher dietary code.
Dumplings are obligatory. “Manti” ($10) can mean different things in different parts of central Asia, but at Cafe Chenar, it means fist-size dumplings, a rough-hewn filling of minced steak and onions in abundance, steamed in a wrapper that wrinkles like your fingertips after an hour in the pool. They’re gently sweet and sparingly seasoned, served with a stewed tomato sauce that almost plays like salsa.
The same tomato dip isn’t quite enough to lend life to the crispy chuchvara ($10), diminutive potato pelmeni fried to a bar snack crisp. But the panfried version ($11), filled with meat and smothered with onions, is oily and sweet and wonderfully sticky.
Pickles and salads
Salads play an important role on the Bukharian table, and it’s here where some of the more fascinating influences pop up.
Bukharian Jews living in Russia rubbed elbows with a local population of ethnic Koreans, borrowing dishes like kimchi ($7), served here as lightly fermented napa cabbage with a touch of spice and a bracing punch of ginger. The markovcha ($7) is similarly Korean-inspired, a giant tangle of shredded carrots in a bright sweet-sour dressing.
Equally fascinating is the Chenar salad ($13), julienned daikon radish, and chilled beef tongue tossed in a creamy mayonnaise-based dressing and topped with crispy fried onions that almost feels like something you might find at a Minnesota potluck.
Hope you like pickles. The “pickled medley” ($13) brings a truckload — cauliflower, carrots, cucumbers, green tomatoes, bell peppers, olives, and more — piled high and simply presented. Along with stark offerings like the Achichuk salad ($10), an Uzbek staple that’s little more than cucumbers, (off-season) tomatoes, and onions with some chiles and fresh herbs, the cold vegetables sometimes feel a little lonely on their own.
But they make a fabulous partner for the shish kebabs.
Kebabs, kebabs, kebabs
The kebabs are the stars of the menu at Cafe Chenar. Uvaydov offers 15 varieties split between lamb, beef, chicken, and fish, all perfectly seasoned, all grilled over live coals and almost always perfectly cooked.
The lamb ribs ($7) are a standout, inch-long crosscut pieces with the kind of unctuous juice and blistering char that can only be properly extracted by holding the bones between your fingers and sucking off every last morsel. Veal liver ($6) is similarly special, with a firm meaty texture and a pleasant level of smoky funk. Those who have lamented the Valley’s dearth of good sauteed liver should give up the quest and just eat this instead.
Not to put this indelicately, but I will fight the first person who posts on Yelp — if somebody hasn’t already — that the lamb kebabs ($8) are made with “fatty, low-quality” meat. It’s a complaint as predictable as it is wrongheaded. Fat quality. Fat is flavor. And anybody who knows kebabs knows that fat is one of the best ways to keep them glistening, succulent, and juicy. Heck, the best part about the skirt steak kebabs ($8) is that Uvaydov threads little pieces of fat in between the chunks of lean steak to improve their flavor and texture.
Of course, lean meats have their place as well. Chicken breast ($5) is perfectly straightforward, and lulya ($5), in chicken and beef varieties, is a sizzling torpedo of seasoned ground meat that will find universal acclaim among carnivores, at least.
It would be easy to skip the fish, but don’t. Salmon ($9) is solid, but sea bass ($15) is stellar, a clinic on how a great piece of fish needs nothing more than a little seasoning, lemon and just the right amount of fire.
Bukharian comfort food
The huggable, comforting menu keeps coming. Eschewing a skewer, the tabaka ($19) is a platter built around a whole, juicy Cornish hen, spatchcocked, marinated, grilled and served with mashed potatoes that contain no dairy and don’t need any. Lagman ($10) is a classic Uzbek soup, Chinese-style, hand-pulled noodles hiding in the bottom of a bowl of crystal-clear beef broth, laden with chunks of tender meat and vegetables.
I’ll cop to a lack of experience with hanum ($8), a pasta-like dough rolled with meat and potatoes, coiled, and steamed. The dough is quite thick and the dish strikes me as a little clumsy. But it’s impossible not to love the Uzbek plov ($12), chunks of stewed lamb and chopped carrots that practically melt into a mound of soft, steaming chickpea-studded rice with just a hint of cumin and garlic.
A sweet experience
Cafe Chenar’s sweets aren’t the highlight, but they’re solid. Light whipped cream and lighter crisped pastry are layered into a Napoleon ($7), and a slice of carrot cake ($7) is precisely what you expect.
More interesting is the chak chak ($7), a dense hive of crisp fried noodles, tossed with raisins and walnuts and fused with honey, as if Snap, Crackle, and Pop went on a sojourn to Uzbekistan. I’m more drawn in by the loves ($8), dense bars made with pulverized nuts. They’re just the right amount of sweet, which, at the risk of saccharine wordplay, could be said of the entire experience.
The dessert, the folks who serve it to you, and the story of Cafe Chenar are just the right amount of sweet.