Turkistan, London: ‘A warm welcome to the first Kazakh restaurant in the UK’

Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country on earth, but the last of the top 10 to plant its gastronomic flag on British soil. That feels like an oversight. Central Asian food already has a presence in London – Uzbek Corner in Queensway Market, Nomadic Flavours on Hackney Road, the four-strong OshPaz chain – but it’s largely been the Uzbeks leading the charge. Not many of us know the name of the Kazakh national dish, or the sound of their traditional music…

What we do know is Borat – ask anyone to name a ’Stan, and the chances are they’ll respond with a “Very nice!” Perhaps we ought to know more. The UK’s Kazakh population is only around 6,000 – roughly a League Two play-off crowd –, but the relationship is deepening. Earlier this year the government signed a critical minerals deal with Kazakhstan. Charterhouse has opened up a satellite campus in the independent school Almaty. Meanwhile, Kazakh heartthrob Dimash Qudaibergen played Wembley last November. They’re overdue for a reputational makeover – and Turkistan in Welling, the UK’s first Kazakh restaurant, might be where that begins.

I talked my friend Séamas into a Silk Road pilgrimage by public transport. The 89 bus from Lewisham carries you over Shooters Hill, a route crossed by Wat Tyler, Henry VIII, Dick Turpin and Byron’s Don Juan. A Tale of Two Cities begins on this road, after the best of times and worst of times. At the summit, the entire capital spreads out over your shoulder before the bus passes through ancient woods into the Kentish hinterlands. You feel as if you are venturing beyond city limits, a sense of adventure that only Zone 4 can provide.

We arrived at brightly lit Turkistan on a quiet Monday night after Nauryz, the Kazakh New Year. The owners have gone to real lengths to make it feel like more than a café with Kazakh touches: craftwork pieces and instruments line the shelves, traditional music plays as screens cycle through images of deserts and mausoleums. The warmth was genuine, if a little undercut by us being the only diners in the room.

A french press of black tea arrived with two resiny dates on a sideplate, followed by mocktails in sugar-rimmed tiki glasses — a Silk Road (apricot) for Séamas and a Samarkand (pomegranate and rose) for me. These were pleasant enough, but this was food for black tea, its bitter tannins required for what was to come.

The menu was proof of a cuisine shaped by 7,000km of geography: a few core Kazakh and Persian dishes, but then a Soviet layer, a Tatar layer, an Uzbek, Tajik and Uyghur layer, touches of Turkish and Chinese… This is the beauty of Central Asian food, a cuisine that absorbed everything the Silk Road carried, which, for 2,000 years, was the whole world.

We drew the borders early. For Séamas, the Tajik soup mastava, a delightfully peppery rice, beef and dill broth that otherwise goes by “liquid pilaf”. For me, proletarian borscht, though the Kazakh interpretation came without beetroot – a shame, as I probably would have gone for the chuchvara dumpling soup had I known. In a basket, the round, studded non bread ubiquitous to Central Asia, the roti-esque qatlama flatbread, and puffs of doughnutty baursak fresh from the fryer. The non was bagel-dense at the crust end, possibly a day older than ideal, but absorbent enough for the soups. Two lamb somsas dipped in ajika – a bright Georgian chilli sauce – went in four scorching bites. Kazakh somsas are similar in shape to their Indian counterparts, but closer to a pasty than a filo triangle, speckled with sesame and positively juicy with lamb tallow.

The plov – Central Asia’s most famous dish, distant cousin to pilafs and paella – arrived in the Samarkandi style, served in layers rather than tossed, spiced with cardamom and cinnamon, fried with carrots and raisins, chillies and quails’ eggs scattered around the edges. It had a satisfying sweetness, though it could have been greasier – as they have it in Uzbekistan, fried in an insensible volume of cottonseed oil.

Then, two resoundingly savoury Kazakh dishes. Naryn: hand-sliced noodles tossed with crumbled mutton, to be dunked by the forkful in a bowl of milky stock. And the national dish, beshbarmak: the same noodles cooked as thick, lasagne-sheet belts, topped with boiled lamb and onions, and a ladle of lubricating broth. The name translates as “five fingers” – you are allegedly meant to eat it with your hands, though that would be more trouble than it’s worth. Séamas described it, on its platter for two, as a horizontal Irish stew – and that’s how it tasted, pleasingly basic. Both were topped with the nomadic delicacy qazi: gamey horse sausage, riven with firm off-white fat that yielded like lardo. Your mileage may vary, but we found the brief taste of horse made for a welcome change after our six-course lambstravaganza.

To close we both had medovic, a Soviet-era honey cake, layered and dense. Unlike the version I know from Sputnick supermarket on Lee High Road, this was the real deal – sturdy to spoon through, but far more pillowy and gentle than the plastic-cartoned sugar bombs I’ve become quietly addicted to. Having reached capacity, we called for the bill, a proud pair of Kazakh stans.

It’s a different kind of night out, catching a bus to Welling for a Central Asian banquet. But if you want to eat something you’ve never eaten before, in a part of the city you may never have been to, it’s places like Turkistan that make the capital feel bigger than you thought it was.

Turkistan, 36 Upper Wickham Lane, Welling DA16 3HF (020 8301 4388). Starters from £4, mains from £15, dessert £4. No alcohol