Crispy Chuchvara And Cold Narin At Chayhana Salom – The Bite
THE BITE: Looking back at our past editions of The Bite, I was aghast to see we hadn’t yet written about 1652 Sheepshead Bay Road’s Chayhana Salom. We’ve spilled a fair amount of digital ink on the two-and-a-half-year-old Uzbek eatery, but mostly about its fantastic write-ups in other outlets or their role in the business recovery following Superstorm Sandy.
So it’s about darn time, because Chayhana Salom is one of my go-to eateries, and worthy of praise.
Chayhana Salom will be one of the 21 delicious restaurants at The BITE, the new name for A Taste of Sheepshead Bay, taking place on Thursday, May 28. Get tickets now!
Like other Uzbek restaurants in the area, they specialize in charred kebabs served alongside mountains of onion, and hearty lagman soup. And while I have several favorites – fried lagman, anybody? – for this review I went for something old, something new and something, well, garlicky.
Something old – fried chuchvara ($6.95)
Pictured at the top of this article, fried chuchvara is an appetizer to be shared before a meal, or a simple snacking item when plopping down in front of the TV.
Described on the menu as “fried ravioli,” if we really wanted to compare it to Italian food, it would be more like fried tortellini. But, really, it’s better compared to a wanton or pelmeni.
The restaurant makes them in-house, with the non-fried version cooked in broth and served as a soup ($6.50). But, bless America, there’s a fried version – so that’s what I eat.
They’re filled with seasoned ground meat, explode in flavor, and are best dipped into the accompanying smetana – or sour cream. Crispy on the outside, savory on the inside, and with the smetana’s cool finish you won’t realize how quickly you pack these in until your finger scrapes along the bare plate.
Something new – Narin ($8.49)
I’ve been hunting local restaurants for good summertime eats, but I always struggle when it comes to Uzbek joints. The food is usually hot, meaty and heavy – and too often that’s how that leaves you feeling on a muggy August day.
So I’m ecstatic to report my “discovery” of narin, a cold appetizer of homemade noodles tossed with thinly shredded beef. From the looks of it, I’m late to the show, because it’s listed as Salom’s “most ordered item” by Seamless.
The dish is packed with chopped up elastic noodles, hand-pulled by the restaurant’s talented chefs for both this item and their lagman. Seasoned boiled meat – some recipes call for horse meat, but it’s beef at Salom – shredded to about the same size as the noodles is tossed with the noodles and the whole thing is chilled.
You’d think noodles and meat would be heavy, but not so with the Narin. It tastes a little buttery, and I kept poking around for the sight of cheese, which I never found – and yet despite all that, the light, delicate flavor and cold temperature is actually kind of uplifting. You can eat this and go for a jog in July and it wouldn’t weigh you down any more than a bowl of cereal would. Not that I’m jogging anywhere anytime soon.
Something garlicky – Eggplant salad ($6.00)
There are a lot of versions of eggplant salad in Sheepshead Bay, and I don’t bother comparing because every place has its own subtle (or not so subtle) take. And I enjoy them all.
Chayhana Salom’s version is described on the menu as “char-grilled eggplant, grilled pepper, tomato, parsley, garlic and olive oil.” And while, volume-wise, eggplant is probably the most plentiful thing in this dish, the first ingredient really ought to be “GARLIC.” All capitalized, just like that.
There’s no timidness here. Where the narin’s flavor was a delicate stroke, the eggplant salad is a sledgehammer’s bash. And that’s no complaint.
Scoop it up onto a hunk of the restaurant’s hard, round flatbread to disrupt the flavor and add texture, then happily avoid speaking too closely to other people for the rest of the day.
Pair any or all of these with one of the restaurant’s flavorful chicken kebabs or some juicy manty, and you’ve got more than a full meal that won’t break the bank.
Chayhana Salom, 1652 Sheepshead Bay Road, (718) 332-2200. Open 11:00am to 10:00pm every day.
The Bite is Sheepshead Bites’ column exploring the foodstuffs of the Sheepshead Bay area. Each week we check out a different offering from one of the many restaurants, delis, food carts, bakeries, butchers, fish mongers, or grocers in our neighborhood. If it’s edible, we’ll take a bite.