Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

I’ll call it ‘KK’. The tongue-twister of a name is the first clue that this place is going to be idiosyncratic. Pasha Hotel, which houses KK, superficially looks like any other undistinguished low-budget hotel, the sort you find all over south London. But slip past the receptionists and this discreet bolt-hole in Camberwell turns into a Central Asian version of a 'Blue Velvet' set. You pass a private bar; a hamman (Turkish bath); a corridor fragrant with air freshener; an ante-room filled with kitsch portraits of Central Asian beauties. By the time you reach the main dining room, via a footbridge over an indoor pond, you’re half-expecting to find bodies under those white shrouds. But those long white sheets on the low tables and seats are just there to protect the furniture, from what I’m not sure.

We were the only Westerners there on our Friday night visit; even our blonde waitress initially addressed us in Russian. The spacious dining room slowly filled up with Turkic, Mongolian, Dungan (Chinese Muslim) and Slavic people of all ages, conversing in Kazakh, Russian and other tongues. Amateur ethnographers should have a field day here.

Culinary adventurers will be thrilled by the variety of dishes, all at low prices. Kazakhstan is mostly land-locked steppe, larger than western Europe, and only gained independendence from the Soviet Union in 1991; Kyrgyzstan to its south is much smaller and is more mountainous, but also has a mixed population that was nomadic for millennia, and lived in yurts. The Silk Road passed through both, bringing culinary influences from what is now Turkey to its west, and from China to its east.

One the menu you’ll find lots of Turkish dishes plus some standard Russian food; skip all these for the Central Asian specialities. These delicacies include plov, similar to pilau or pilaf rice dishes; Indian or Turkish-style flatbreads and kebabs; and steamed dumplings (manti), which you find all the way from Poland to Japan in various guises.

Lagman is a bowl of hand-stretched wheat noodles, topped with stir-fried fat-tailed sheep and vegetables that you also find in Xinjiang (‘New territory’), in what is now China, eaten by the Muslim Uyghur people of the Kashgar area – it was, unsurprisingly, similar to a Chinese stir-fry. The manti (dumplings) seemed more exotic – large, plump and moist, not like the delicate pierogi or Japanese gyoza. Gan fan, a rice dish with vegetables and a meat topping, was a simple dish but nicely presented.

KK might not showcase Central Asian food at its very best, but eating here’s quite an experience. Later on you might get Russian and Kazakh musicians, and even a belly dancer on Friday nights. If you splash out on the best wine they serve it will only set you back £15.50. Which should leave you enough change to try the hammam too.

Time Out London Issue 2022: May 21-27 2009