Xinjiang Food Outside China
trevelyan
September 28, 2007, 02:54 AM posted in General DiscussionAnyone found a decent Xinjiang restaurant outside China? You can find the restaurants everywhere in Beijing but non-Lanzhou places are tough to find in Shanghai. I'd never heard of Xinjiang food before coming to China, but maybe I was living in a bubble.
Kyle
September 28, 2007, 04:32 AMWhat type of food are you looking for in particular? Harbin is littered with Xinjiang 串儿 places. I even ran across one of those earth stoves on the side of the street the other day. They were selling "nan" break (sorry, don't know the character or even tone). Good stuff.
wildyaks
September 28, 2007, 04:48 AMBut Harbin is still China, isn't it? I know those Nan breads from India and Nepal. They are delicious indeed
dan78cj5
September 28, 2007, 04:59 AMYeah, Afghanistan has a lot of nan style flat-bread, and a lot of the foods in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are very similar to Xinjiang as well. I bet there's a lot of bleed over in styles of food through Central Asia into S Asia, NE Asia, etc.,. Good question though what are you looking for. A Han Chinese guide in Kashgar kept asking us "What do you mean you want Uygur food, its just fatty lamb on a stick and flat bread" - we didn't quite agree, but what is it that you are looking for was a valid question, and seems to be here too.
Kyle
September 28, 2007, 06:17 AMYeah, Harbin is still China. Y'know, though, that 串儿 doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to do at home. Although, I was eyeing the pit tender the other night when I was eating. He had this silver bowl of spice / sauce stuff. Every time, before he applied it to the meat, he'd look over his shoulder. I think there's some secret recipe to his 串儿. It's probably crack. That would explain why I eat there 3 or 4 times a week.
artkho
September 28, 2007, 07:04 AMPerhaps the closest thing to a Xinjiang restaurant in California's Bay Area is a Islamic-Chinese restaurant in Milpitas. But then again, I am probably wrong because I am equating Islamic-Chinese food to Xinjiang food. The restaurant's url is http://www.dardaseafood.com/.
trevelyan
October 01, 2007, 11:21 AMI was reading Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones the other day, and it claimed that as of 1990, there were only something like 500 Uyghurs (legally) in the USA. I don't know where he's getting his stats, but unless there's been a huge increase in immigration, this might explain the lack of Xinjiang food abroad.
dan78cj5
September 28, 2007, 03:56 AMI'm with ya' I wanna find a Uygur restaurant. Or better yet, one of those street side earth stoves baking up the 'samsa.'