Chayhana SALOM Cafe 3.51

Staffed with four chefs with years of culinary experience in Uzbeki restaurants (those actually in Uzbekistan), the owners have spent countless painstaking hours putting together a menu for their grand opening. Aside from Uzbeki favorites, like pilaf and samsas, they're offering a number of unique dishes and new spins on old classics.

Among them will be hamar hasip, a dish in which dough is stuffed with meat and rice, rolled up and steamed. They will also have dolma, a version of stuffed grape leaves with meat and a drizzling of the house's special sauce. Their lagman, a hearty soup, will be made with handmade noodles - "not store noodles," they emphasize.

Oh, and the chicken tabaka, the flattened Cornish hen these Central Asians have graciously brought to our shores. Chayhana's tabaka will be made to emulate those made at Ugolok, a restaurant whose take on the chicken dish is well-known to anyone from Tashkent.

"People from Tashkent will know where the recipe comes from just by tas