What to eat in Tashkent
Tashkent feeds you early: plov from the cauldron before lunch, samsa from the tandoor, lagman, shurpa, market bread, halva and green tea in a chaikhana.

[ ] Eat plov before noon
    Rice, carrot, onion and lamb cooked in layers in a cauldron so every grain stays separate. Fergana plov is loose and mixed; the Samarkand version is served in layers, unstirred.
[ ] Get samsa from the tandoor
    A triangular pastry of chopped lamb, onion and tail fat slapped onto the wall of a tandoor and baked until the crust crisps. Inside it should be juicy rather than dry.
[ ] Try lagman
    Hand-pulled noodles with meat and vegetables, served as a soup or stir-fried. The dough is stretched in the air, and watching it is worth the wait.
[ ] Try shurpa
    A clear lamb-on-the-bone broth with coarsely cut vegetables and herbs. The meat and vegetables are eaten separately and the broth is drunk from a bowl.
[ ] Eat manti
    Large steamed dumplings with chopped lamb, onion and a piece of tail fat. Eaten by hand and bitten carefully: hot juice collects inside.
[ ] Buy non bread
    A round tandoor flatbread with a thin patterned centre and a thick rim. The Tashkent and Samarkand versions differ; the latter is denser and keeps for weeks.
[ ] Try shashlik
    Lamb or beef on skewers over coals, alternating with pieces of tail fat. The minced version, lyulya, is shaped on a flat skewer.
[ ] Try dimlama
    Meat and vegetables layered in a cauldron and steamed in their own juices without added water. A home dish where each layer keeps its own flavour.
[ ] Try norin
    A cold dish of finely sliced boiled dough with horse meat kazy sausage and onion. A Tashkent classic served at celebrations and in the older chaikhanas.
[ ] Try achichuk salad
    Thinly sliced tomatoes with red onion, black pepper and sometimes chilli, with no oil and no vinegar. The simplest of salads, existing to be eaten with plov.
[ ] Try halva
    A dense sweet of seeds or nuts and sugar, cut from a large block at the market. Besides sesame there is sunflower, walnut and the flour-based holvaitar.
[ ] Buy dried fruit and nuts at the market
    Apricots, several kinds of raisin, dried melon, whole apricots with the stone and walnuts — the reason to go to Chorsu. Everything is offered to taste, and haggling is normal.
[ ] Try chak-chak and parvarda
    Chak-chak is fried dough pieces bound with honey into a mound; parvarda is pulled caramel dusted with flour, white and brittle. Both go with tea.
[ ] Drink green tea in a chaikhana
    Unsweetened green tea from a pot and a bowl, drunk all day and especially in the heat. The bowl is filled only a third of the way, which is a mark of respect rather than meanness.
[ ] Drink qatiq or ayron
    Thick fermented qatiq and the diluted, salted ayron: what people here drink with fatty meat and against the heat. Sold loose at markets.
[ ] Try Uzbek wine and brandy
    Winemaking here is old and the grapes are local and dessert-leaning: the wines tend to be sweet and strong. The brandies of Tashkent and Samarkand are a surviving Soviet tradition.

Checklist from Unload: https://unloads.me/c/food-tashkent