From Uighur With Love

Have you ever tried to combine two completely contrasting cuisines into one dish? They say that necessity is the mama of invention, but they don’t tell you that sometimes necessity looks at invention and regrets that drunken one night stand. When you get home late and hungry and your cupboard looks like Old Mother Hubbard’s, do you look at those disparate ingredients and think – “I can put those two together! I can invent something!”?

Let me tell you, combining pasta with soy sauce and wasabi does not a good meal maketh. However that doesn’t mean it can’t work. Like a fine stew, the best kind of fusion is one that happens gradually. One of the best cases of this can be found in Xinjiang, Northern China - the former East Turkistan, home to the Uighurs.

Today’s Uighur people come from that mixing of cultures and ideas which occurred along the Silk Road throughout Eurasia more than a thousand years ago. The mix is vast - from Hungarian to Turkish and Chinese, with Buddhism and then Islam thrown into the mix. What has resulted is a truly beautiful people and of course, a fascinating cuisine.

I ventured down to Dixon Street in Chinatown to find one of only two authentic Uighur restaurants in Sydney - the aptly named Uighur Cuisine. As a lover of both Asian and Arabic food, the combination of flavours was a revelation.

We started with a crispy red cabbage salad, which had a zesty garlic and ginger flavour, like a plate of my favourite Arabic pickles but more delicate. We then ordered the sweet and savoury lamb-filled steamed dumplings, the moreish cumin marinated chicken kebab and the crisp, savoury fried meat bread (bad name, rad taste), all accompanied by Chinese black tea. The flavours are unapologetically bold like an old grandmother, half-senile but painstakingly honest.

After the meal we talk to one of the owners, the bright young Airad who is barely 25 but is already married and managing the restaurant. He speaks to us of how oppressive life is in East Turkistan (he refuses to call it Xinjiang), and how the Uighur culture is disappearing as a result of the political situation in China. “There’s no freedom there” Airad says.

The good news is that there are already 50 Uighur families now living free and safe in Sydney, and even more in Melbourne and Adelaide. Which gets me thinking about a new kind of fusion - Uighur-Australian! Now that could definitely work.

Uighur Cuisine
Shop 1, 2 Dixon St, Haymarket, Sydney
(corner of Liverpool Street and Dixon Street)
Tel: (02) 9267 8555

By Lena Hattom

Photo: Grab Your Fork