kiroran uyghur restaurant

We surveyed the remnants on our table. Absolute. Carnage. Napkins lay stage left, smeared with stains, crumpled into balls. Bones were scattered across the table - some thoroughly voided of their meat, others discarded. The meat given up on.

It was to be expected, though. The combination of four hungry people and the promise of lamb-y goodness should not be underestimated.

I first chanced across the concept of Uyghur cuisine a couple of years ago, when celebrating the Cat's birthday. "Come to Rocktober!" his message had said "I'm ordering half a goat". And to Rocktober we went. It was, I think, the first food blog I ever posted (now long discarded).

I digress.

It has been a while since I've been back. Perhaps it was because I didn't want to ruin the memory. But I did, just before Christmas, with the Cat. And again, just recently, and this time, with a camera.

the inconspicuous entrance

The resturant has a rather inconspicuous entrance. Blink and you'll miss it, as they say. The Bean took friends there once and walked past twice, before calling me, looking to her left and exclaiming "Oh! There it is!"

traditional uyghur tandoori BBQ lamb skewers (2 skewers) $12.00

We order the regulars. Sort of. You see, we normally order the small skewers, at 5 for $10. These are the big ones. They taste the same (deliciously lamb-y with a kick of earthy spice) but have bones through them. Order the small ones.

big bowl chicken $20.00 (small size)

I should, thinking back, have written down the name of this dish. If you say "big bowl chicken", the waiters will understand. I think it's the first dish on the Chicken page of the menu. Better, in any case, than ordering, as we did, "One big bowl chicken in the small size, please".

Do not, unless you have a hungry table of six, order anything here in the large size. This bowl was a good 30cm in diameter and filled with bits of chewy, flat handmade noodles (many a chopstick battle was fought over them), chunks of chicken (more bones) and fat, sauce sopping cubes of potato.

extra handmade noodles $3.00

The drawback of the big bowl chicken, however, is the relative lack of flat, chewy handmade noodle (and the resultant - sometimes messy - chopstick battles). Good news is, for a whole $3.00, you can order a big ol' plate of them, which the waiters will pragmatically dump into the bowl. Mess them around to sop up the sauce, and everybody is happy. (You can also order rice, but these noodles are something else fantastic!)

And when the sauce is sopped up, the noodles sucked down, jugs of water all drunk and a $12.00 lunch is had, you may, as I did, look around at the table and laugh at the mess left behind. Or, as I also did, you may look just past your table to see a table for two who had ordered a small serving of a dish. Each. They had no idea what hit them...

Silk Road Uyghur Restaurant
8 Dixon Street
Sydney NSW 2000
ph: 02 9283 0998

(BYO allowed here - the others aren't so alcohol friendly)