The name of this restaurant rolls off the tongue like a curse snarled by a doll-faced Russian girl into her cell phone. "Che-bur-ETCH-nee-ya!" For some reason, this image pleases me.
Cheburechnaya is a Bukharian kosher restaurant. I had no idea where Bukhara was, but I learned that it's an area of Uzbekistan - formerly populated with Jews who have come to Queens in order to bring us their delicacies.
Among destination dining neighborhoods in New York, Rego Park seems an undiscovered country. The large restaurant is well-known by Southern Soviets I've come to know, and every patron sported Brighton Beach style clothes, facial hair, and/or jewelry.
The restaurant itself is on a commercial strip of a street...brightly lit and kind of stark inside. Cheesy and entertaining Russian videos with sexy ads play on a couple of screens. I hear it's busy on Saturday nights. Friday nights they're closed because they're religious.
Consulting the menu, there seem to be 3 main food groups:
1) Grilled animal parts
2) Dumplings
3) Soups and salads
Pictures (in color and non-faded) helped guide the tourist through his/her order.
I'm definitely a meat-and-cabbage guy when the need arises. So we ordered a crew of meat kebabs, a picked salad, and a few other items worth trying:
Green soda! Kind of like cream soda, but with less flavor.
Pickled cabbages, pickled tomato, picked pickles. Good for my belly!
These are called Mantys. Beyond panties for men...these are giant noodle dumplings stuffed with chopped, slightly peppery lamb. A crowd-pleaser.
The samcy is a filo pastry blanketing a small lamb chop. The delicious dough amazingly lacks butter. If they weren't so rich, they'd be my favorite item on the menu.
Dolma - the international meat-stuffed grape leaf. I liked these the least of the dishes...thought they were smushy and uninteresting. My fellow diners seemed to love them.
My personal king of Bukharian kebabs - beef liver!
These were optimistically called "Fat-free lamb ribs" on the menu. Crispy/salty niblets of lamb-on bone. These would be my crown prince of kebabs.
Honorable mention goes to the lamb fat kebabs - each bite was like the bubbly, crispy rind of a lamb chop.
Soggy, sad baklava trying to ush me from the restaurant after my meal.
In the end, this was a fantastic meal. It had all three pillars of good mealhood:
1) (mostly) healthy with meat and probiotic laden veggies
2) tasty and soul-satisfying
3) reasonably priced.
I couldn't wait to back as soon as I'd left. Cheburechnaya gets 8 bellies out of 10.
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