The Universal Yum country is Ukraine for March. We could easily have returned to the same restaurant where we experienced our Polish food, Kramarczuk’s Sausage Company, in January. A Ukrainian family owns Kramarczuk’s Sausage Company. Since the idea is to try different foods, we opted instead to visit Samarkand which also serves eastern European and central Asian dishes came up in a Google search for restaurants serving Ukrainian food. Samarkand is owned by a family from Uzbekistan.
The children opted for American food from the kid’s menu. Charlotte
tried a bite of three dishes ordered by the adults to share. Neither child was
a fan of the evenings’ fare; however, the adults enjoyed the meal!
Following are the photos we took of the food we tried along
with descriptions. Megan, Jeremy, and I took photos.
We started with traditional Tandoor bread. All of us ate the bread. We ordered
two servings as we did not if one $5.00 appetizer would feed all of us. One
loaf was plenty! Joe finished the bread today for lunch.
Potatoes with mushroom was our second appetizer. By the time we remembered to take a photo we had eaten all but four or five bites of it. The serving was large enough to be a meal for one person. This dish is described on the menu as “homestyle fried potatoes and mushrooms fried with onions. Charlotte liked the potato part. The adults each had a second helping.
Megan’s dish was Lagman soup. Soup made with bone broth, long
beans, carrots, daikon, tri-color peppers, tomatoes, onions, celery, star
anise, cabbage, and beef. Served with handmade, hand pulled noodles. Very
flavorful soup! Charlotte tasted the noodles.
Joe went with the Assorted Dolma plate which consisted of
grape leaves, cabbage, and peppers stuffed with ground beef rice, onions, and
spices. Joe said the rice reminded him of the Iranian rice dish that his friend,
Babak, prepares. I had a couple of bites of the cabbage roll. Megan ate the
dolma.
I ordered a side of mashed potatoes which ended up being
enough to feed the entire table. Joe finished them for lunch today. My main entrée
though was Tuy Kabob. This is a Samarkand style traditional beef stew. There were
no vegetables unless they were blended into the broth. The rich and hearty
broth with large chunks of perfectly prepared beef was my favorite dish of the
evening and was very filling. I could eat this dish every day!
Charlotte and her chicken tenders. The only downside to our evening
was when Jeremy cut into the first chicken tender it was still raw in the
middle. The other two tenders were cooked. Charlotte could not have eaten all
three tenders – it was a lot of food. I was disappointed at the waiter’s
response when Jeremy showed him the piece of raw chicken. We got a simple, “I
am sorry.” No offer to return the piece or to replace it should we wish to take
it home.
Caleb ate chicken tenders.
We ended our meal with desserts. They had six items listed on their dessert menu and there were six of us...
All six
of us tried a bite or two or three of the other four traditional European and desserts.
Shown in the photo (moving from front to back) we tasted Spartak a chocolate nine-layer
cake, Napoleon, Medovik a traditional eight-layer honey cake, and Pahlava (aka
baklava). Megan ranked Joe’s baklava recipe as superior to the Pahlava.
In the past we have taste tested and ranked the Yum box treats after dinner. This month we decided to wait as we did not leave the restaurant until 8:00 pm and everyone was tired. We will try to do the Yum box snack next weekend.
The April Yum box is from the Baltic states region which encompasses the three countires of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
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