The Marmot’s Hole

UPDATE: Map to the area’s eateries can be found on this blog.

ORIGINAL POST: Earlier this month, I came across a piece in the Munhwa Ilbo on Gwanghui-dong’s "Central Asia Village" (Jungang ashia-chon), a small collection of Uzbek, Kazakh and Mongolian restaurants, bakeries and shops located near Dongdaemun Stadium.  Being, as you know, married to a Mongolian, I was of course familiar with the Mongolian shops and businesses in the area, but I was unaware that eateries from other parts of Central Asia had opened up shop in the neighborhood as well.  Anyway, the wife and I decided to visit the area a couple of weekends ago to sample the tastes of her Central Asian cousins and former comrades in international socialism.

This, as the Cyrillic signboard would suggest, is the Ala-Too Cafe (which is on the second floor), with an Uzbek bakery on the first floor.  The bakery was being manned at the time by a very friendly ethnic Korean woman fr0m Tashkent.  As you can see below, the bakery has a more than adequate selection of Central Asian and Russian breads, cakes and pastries, the likes of which are hard to find anywhere else in Korea:

Not seen here are the napoleons and a honey-dipped cake thingie (my wife probably knows the name), which are highly recommended.  Also sold, of course, is Russian sour cream, or smetana.

We went up to the second floor cafe, where the hostess and kitchen staff were very, very Uzbek.  The diner strikes one at first as a bit shabby–my guess is that it used to be a dabang tea house–but the scent of lamb and exotic spices was quite welcome, and the food more than made up for the less-than-striking decor:

We ordered some borscht and Osh-plov, which this website describes as:

Steamed rice with carrots, onions and meat, and a lot of oil (generally cotton oil). Sometimes they add chickpeas or potatoes. It should be cooked with a lot of oil, they say that the oil should be dripping from your elbows as you eat the plov (with your hands!). Generally it is served in big plates to be shared by all. The most important thing about the plov seems to be the chopping of the carrots. They should be chopped very thinly (and definitely not grated!). It is eaten with tomatoe-cucumber-onion-dill salad.

This was accompanied by Russian bread, some carrot and cabbage salads and black tea with lemon.  Yum.  And very reasonably priced.

NOTE: My wife brought home the next weekend some manti, or steamed dumplings, which were quite good, and highly recommended for those hankering for some down-home steppe cuisine.  And who isn’t?

Later, we stopped in another Uzbek cafe, the Samarkand Cafe, which is even more modest of an establishment than the Ala-Too Cafe–upscale eateries these are not.  A hole in the wall of a narrow alley, really:

I guess the photo of the Registan is obligatory.

OK, and here, we have somsa, which are flaky pastries with lamb and onion inside, red beet and potato salad, tea with lemon, and a flask of vodka.  Very edible.  Very edible, indeed.

Now, also in the neighborhood are a couple of other Central Asian eateries and, of course, the Genghis Khan.  I have yet to try Uncle Genghis’s place yet, mostly because my wife has heard bad things about it.  But she’s pretty particular about her Mongolian food, so I’m sure it’s not all that bad, and in fact, I’ve heard and read good things about it.

Getting There:

Leave Exit 11 of Dongdaemun Stadium Station (Line 5) and the street with the eats should be right around there.