Tag: Culture

Shashlik! This delicious dish, beloved all over Central Asia, is an Osh specialty for good reason. Almost every cafe offers many kinds of shashlik. There are lamb ribs, pieces of lamb with tail fat, lamb liver, tender pieces of beef, seasoned chicken, and several kinds of lula kebab.

If you want to enjoy a cup of properly brewed fragrant green tea, Osh is the place to do it! Here, even in the height of summer, the locals sip hot green tea in the shade of plane-trees, sitting on a traditional tapchan.

Nowhere else in Kyrgyzstan is there such a variety of tandoor flatbreads as in Osh! In almost every quarter there is a tandoor stand, where mouth-watering hot flatbreads are sold from daybreak onward. To prepare them, the master bakers get up as early as 3:00 in the morning, kindle the tandoor, and knead the dough.…

Maida manti is the most popular vegetarian dish in Osh cuisine. In the past, they were called “Chychkan-manti” (or “mouse-manti”) because of their small size. Another common name was “eki tyiyn manti,” a reference to their Soviet-era price of 2 kopecks apiece. Today, of all the names, only “maida manti” remains.

Together with pilau, samsa is one of the five culinary staples of Osh. It is difficult to imagine Osh cuisine without it. Unlike the samsa common in South and Southeast Asia, Osh samsa is much bigger, fuller and tastier!

Pilau, or “ash” in Kyrgyz, is Osh’s signature dish! It’s probably no coincidence that the name of the city and of its most famous food sound so similar. In Osh, they cook a classic variant of pilau, which differs from those found in Tashkent or Samarkand. There are similarities with the variations of pilau in…