Places to eat in Kazakhstan

Koktebe is the most popular leasure spot in Almaty - a hill overlooking the city with many cafes serving great shish kebab and everything that goes with it. The hill is connected to the city by cable cars. Great place to watch the sun go down into the steppe.

Favorite Dish: Lamb/leaver kebab

National Cuisine

Traditional Kazakh belief held that separate spirits inhabited and animated the earth, sky, water, and fire, as well as domestic animals. Up to this day, particularly honored guests (primarily in rural settings) are treated to a feast of freshly killed lamb. The guests are sometimes asked to bless the lamb and to ask its spirit for permission to taste its flesh. Besides lamb, many other traditional foods retain symbolic value in Kazakh culture.

Since old times hospitality has been the most distinctive feature of the Kazakh people. The guest is always given a cordial welcome and offered a place of honor at the table. In the first instance the guest is treated with kumys, shubat or airan, then tea with milk or cream, baursaks , a type of bread which is usually baked in the form of flat cakes, raisins, irimshik and kurt. Then follow appetizers made of horseflesh or mutton - kazy, karta, shuzhuk, zhai, zhaya, sur-yet, kaburga, etc.

The adornment of any dastarkhan and the main traditional dish is Beshparmak. Boiled meat is usually served in large pieces. The pelvic bone and shin are given to elderly guests of honor, the brisket goes to the son-in-law, the cervical vertebra - to girls and so on. To the guest of honor ranking highest among the others the host hands over the sheep's head cooked in a special way. The guest of honor distributes it among those present observing a special ritual which reflects the ancient custom of respectful attitude towards guests: old men, children, close and distant relatives.

The fragrant meat is eaten with rolled and boiled small pieces of dough. An excellent addition to this dish is the saturated fragrant meat broth called sorpa, which is usually served in pialas. At the end of the meal kumys is served, which is again followed by tea.

The present day Kazakh cuisine includes not only traditional Kazakh dishes but also dishes of Uzbek, Uigur, Russian, Tatar, Korean and other cuisine. Kazakhs have accumulated much experience in processing and cooking meat and milk dishes, the present day life has expanded this set with dishes made of vegetables, fruits, fish, sea products, various cakes and sweets. Nevertheless, meat remains the most popular food ingredient in the national cuisine.

Meat is the basis of the majority of dishes. Meat dishes are a sign of a festive table's (dastarkhan) richness and diversity. In the traditional Kazakh cuisine preference has always been given to boiling. This process allows to obtain soft and delicate gustatory shades of meat, adds juiciness and fragrance to it.

Long-term preservation of food was given a special importance. During live-stock slaughter a part of meat was salted, dried, and sometimes smoked. There are a number of delicacies made of horse meat: kazy, shuzhuk, zhal, zhaya, karta, and other.

This section will shortly feature recipes of national Kazakh dishes.

My favourite restaurant here is Soho. It has very nice atmosphere , entertainment program & is not expensive.
Also the foreigners usually like the place named Zheruik- there you can taste traditional cuisine, am sure you'll not be disappointed.

Favorite Dish: Soho offers mostly mexican cuisine but the menu also has the variety of european dishes.

The Georgian restaurant high up on Lenina (Dostyk) Prospect, in a small road almost opposite the entrance to the Border Guards (formerly KGB) school. You recognize this by the sword-and-shield emblems on the railings. I lived next door myself, in the so-called 'Military Settlement' area ('Voyenny Gorodok').
Atmosphere...before the place started to become known to the diplomatic and business community, the staff would turn off all lights on request and just have candles for (often the only) diner and guest. Romantic...Georgian lullabies would make it irresistible, or perhaps the odd Russian pop song.

Favorite Dish: A mushroom dish, or satsivi (chicken with walnuts)

When I lived in Kazakhstan, there were not a lot of restaurant options. There was one Chinese place right near my office in downtown Almaty that was a real favorite, and a kebab place near my apartment, but that was pretty much it. Zhambyl had exactly two restaurants, an Uzbek place (good food, but I always got sick after eating there) and a Kazakh place (awful food). I hope things have improved!
All that said, there is fantastic food to be had in this country if you make it yourself. The central market in Almaty is a wonder, and there were fruits and vegetables there that tasted so good it was like they were from another universe. I have never had such incredible tomatoes in my life, and even the hazelnuts and raisins tasted vastly better than any I've ever eaten. Lipeshka, the local flat bread, is great too, but only if you get it at the market from a local woman and then eat it within the next hour.

Favorite Dish: I was not impressed by Kazakh food, I hate to say. I'm very open-minded when it comes to cuisine, but I really didn't think much of the local options (except Uzbek food, which is great). The Kazakh national dish is something called besh parmak, which means 'five fingers'--that's what you eat it with. It's prepared by chopping up a sheep, dumping it in a huge cauldron of boiling water with maybe an onion and a pinch of salt for flavor, boiling it for hours until the taste has completely disappeared, and then serving the whole mess on a big plate along with big flat noodles that get thrown into the pot at the end. The head of the sheep is put in front of the head of the table, and he takes a knife and slices off pieces to hand around to all the guests. The more honored you are, the better piece you get. I think an ear is considered the pinnacle.

I really love lamb and mutton, but after three months of eating it the way it is prepared in Kazakhstan, I never wanted to see it again. Sigh.

This is a typical Soviet era monument in Gorky Park in Almaty. To The Great Partisan war. Near here is a memorial to the Kazakhs that were killed during the Bolshevik Revolution! A really bloody part of their history. SO many wars. There are also some trees here planted by former Soviet leaders in memorial. Yeltsin's is oldest but smallest, they say he watered it with Vodka! Almaty was the capital untill this year, in Russian it was Alma Ata, the name means father of apples! The big apple of Kazakhstan.

One of the local delicacies is Shish Kebab. Cooked on street side BBQ's, it's then brought to your table for a delicious feast of meat and flatbread.