If you’ve never tried Uzbek cuisine, Sarvar Abdurashidov recommends the samsas: savory pastries with a flaky crust, stuffed with spiced, minced meat or vegetables.
“When you go to an Uzbek restaurant or Uzbekistan, you have to start with the samsa and then the tea,” says Abdurashidov, the owner of Chaykhana and Piyola, two of Pittsburgh’s new Uzbek restaurants.
Then you have to try the beshbarmak — Abdurashidov’s personal favorite.
“Square noodles and a lamb shank on top. It's so tender, juicy. I love that,” he said.
And, of course, there’s plov, a delectable blend of rice, meat, vegetables and spices that’s fried, boiled and steamed to absorb oil and juices without sticking. Traditionally served with shakarap, a simple tomato and onion side salad, plov is not only the most popular dish at Uzbek restaurants, Abdurashidov says, but it’s an important cultural dish as well — think weddings and newborn babies.
For Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic holiday celebrating the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, Abdurashidov served plov to 500 people in the Uzbek community around Green Tree.
“It was around 400 pounds,” Abdurashidov said.
Khurshida Khad, Abdurashidov’s wife, says plov takes three hours to make, frying carrots and steaming rice, and it requires good technique to get right.
“In Uzbekistan … each restaurant has one chef that does the plov, and nobody else would be able to do it,” she said.
Luckily, Pittsburgh now has a few chefs up to the challenge.
A growing Uzbek community, 6,000 miles from home
Abdurashidov moved to Pittsburgh from Uzbekistan in 2013 — coincidentally the same year Pittsburgh got Kavsar, its first Uzbek restaurant, up in Mount Washington.
“In the early days, many people in Pittsburgh had never tried Uzbek food, so we took our time building trust,” wrote Tahmina Umaralieva, Kavsar’s owner, in an interview by email. She owned restaurants in Uzbekistan in the 1990s before immigrating to the United States.
“We didn’t use traditional marketing — just social media and word of mouth. Slowly, our guests became regulars,” Umaralieva said. “Even during the pandemic, when we had to close for indoor dining for nearly four years, our takeout business stayed strong thanks to the loyalty of our customers.”
More than a decade later, Umaralieva isn’t slowing down. She just launched Kavsar Express, which is Pittsburgh’s first Uzbek food truck. And she says she’s proud to see other Uzbek restaurants find success.
“We always hoped the cuisine would be appreciated, but we didn’t imagine it would grow so quickly,” Umaralieva said. “Being the first meant introducing something completely new — and that came with challenges. But once people tried our food, they understood its heart.”
Oydinoy Nazarova, who helps run the Uzbek Association of Pittsburgh, says the U.S. has large Uzbek communities in New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia. The organization was established in 2018 and helps Uzbek immigrants with such services as finding jobs and enrolling kids in school, as well as organizing community events and holiday celebrations.
“For whatever the immigrants need, I'm working on it,” Nazarova said.
She says the Uzbek community here is growing every day, both with people moving directly from Uzbekistan and Uzbeks moving here from other states. For one, Pittsburgh and Uzbekistan have similar weather, with all four seasons.
“Summer is a summer, winter is a winter,” Nazarova said.
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But she also says the low cost of living and slower pace of life have drawn people to Pittsburgh, especially when compared to places such as New York City.
“New York is a very busy place. If you live there, it's really hard to find a parking spot,” Chaykhana and Piyola owner Abdurashidov said. “Sometimes when [people] come home late, they just park their car and then they sleep inside and then just go to work in the morning because there is no way to find a parking spot.”
Abdurashidov’s wife Khad agrees. She lived in New York City before Pittsburgh, and she says people there are stressed and focused on work. And as more people have moved here, they’ve told friends and posted about it on social media — sort of like a snowball rolling down a hill.
“One by one, I believe they started calling friends,” Khad said.
In 2010, there were an estimated 200 people living in Pittsburgh who were born in Uzbekistan, according to the U.S. Census American Community Survey. By 2023, that number had grown by nearly 300%.
Pizza to plov
When Abdurashidov came to the U.S., he started working at his friend’s pizza place in Green Tree — Mario’s Pizza — and got educated on the local restaurant business.
“My friends lived in Pittsburgh, so that's why I came here,” Abdurashidov said. “I worked as a cook first, then as a pizza driver for three years. As a manager, six months. Then I saved up and opened my own [restaurant].”
In 2017, he purchased his pizza place in the West End, Pizza Bella Monte, which was already an Uzbek-owned restaurant, via owner financing. Abdurashidov paid off the debt in one year and operated it as a pizza shop for three years. But he and his wife Khad were craving flavors from home, sometimes driving eight hours to New York City for specific Uzbek dishes and bringing back takeout for friends
“Our friends would say, ‘I want this from an Uzbek restaurant. Could you bring it, because we miss it,’” Khad said. “We realized, why not give our best so we can give to Uzbeks what they miss the most?”
They added an Uzbek menu to Pizza Bella Monte’s menu, and much more than he anticipated, customers started showing up for the Uzbek dishes. The restaurant rebranded as Chakhanya, centering the Uzbek cuisine, while continuing to serve pizza and wings.
Abdurashidov isn’t the only restaurateur to pair pizza and Uzbek food. Pizza Bari Downtown and Vinny’s Pizza in Brookline are also serving up pies and plov, side by side.
Why? Nazarova, from the Uzbek Association, says opening a new business from scratch is hard — there’s permitting, figuring out taxes, and even finding a location. But buying or taking over an existing pizza shop helps with a lot of those challenges.
“Whenever they bought the pizza store, it's kind of a ready location for them, so it's easy to start your own business,” says Nazarova, from the Uzbek Association. “And then they started adding an Uzbek menu with the pizza menu.”
Social media stars
Piyola and Chaykhana have highly active Instagram accounts, which Abdurashidov credits with bringing the restaurants to a wider local audience.
“Most Uzbek restaurants focused on the Uzbek customers,” Abdurashidov said. “I ask myself, ‘Why not do advertising in English, since we are in the United States, in Pittsburgh?’”
He loves taking photos and videos of food, and Instagram was a great way to showcase the diversity of Uzbek cuisine, such as Chinese noodles and Russian dumplings, from when Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union.
“I think that's why people loved it,” Abdurashidov said. “A lot of local people who live in Pittsburgh, they started showing up.”
Some of the videos are straightforward, such as a time lapse of work in the kitchen or an employee eating a specific dish. But others are wildly imaginative. In one post, a cake is so tasty it teleports the eater — employee (and frequent video star) Muhammad Hussain — from Piyola's kitchen to Mount Washington.
In another, Hussain mistakes the sound of Piyola's oven door closing for that of a Mercedes G-Wagon.
Khad says once they started advertising in English, Americans started coming into Chakhna and saying they loved the food, with some saying it compared to what they had eaten while on vacation in Uzbekistan.
“That gave us a positive energy to go for more,” Khad said.
That next step was Piyola, which opened in November 2024. In contrast to Chakyana, which is casual and takeout-focused, Abdurashidov says Piyola was designed from the ground up to be a more upscale experience complete with fancier decor, a large dining room and a larger kitchen with new kebab dishes.
“I love cooking, I love the restaurant business, hospitality business,” Abdurashidov said. “I love making people happy when I cook something and then they love it. That's the most important thing for me.”
Where to go
If you want to try Pittsburgh’s Uzbek cuisine, here are the current local options:
- Kavsar: 16 Southern Ave., Mt. Washington
- Piyola: 663 Washington Rd., Mt. Lebanon
- Chaykhana: 410 S Main St., West End
- Caravan Halal Restaurant: 10 Smithfield St., Downtown
- Pizza Bari: 955 Liberty Ave., Downtown
- Vinny’s Pizza: 618 Brookline Blvd., Brookline
- House of Shish Kebabs: 1926 Spring Garden Ave., Spring Garden
- Cafe Samarkand: 3103 Banksville Rd., Dormont
