Uzbek cuisine at Boukhara in Lyon

Boukhara, a little restaurant in Lyon’s 7th district with an unassuming frontage, is always full, despite the fact that it has only just celebrated its second anniversary. On weekends it’s almost impossible to get a table without a booking. “It breaks my heart to turn people away; we will have to move to new premises”, said the chef, Natalya Komlenkova. She is still surprised at how popular her cooking is with the people of Lyon, mainly because Uzbek cuisine is not very well known in France. When she opened it in 2021, there was only one restaurant serving Central Asian cuisine in the whole of France! 

© Susie Waroude

When she arrived in Lyon in 2011, to join her husband, Édouard, who now serves diners in the restaurant, Natalya didn’t think that she would return to working in a kitchen. At the age of 24, she had opened a humble restaurant in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, which is still in business today. Now run by her brother, it serves 150 diners every service. Her restaurant in Lyon may be smaller, but the food she serves is every bit as flavoursome. On the menu, you will find specialities such as plov(a pilaf dish), manti and chuchvara dumplings, laghman (noodles in a broth or stir-fried), which are typical of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan. Unable to source wine from her country, Natalya serves Georgian wines to accompany her dishes.

Everything is home-made, even the pasta. In her opinion: “the taste is lost when machines are used”. To remain as faithful as possible to the traditional recipes, she sources her spices, herbal teas and tea from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. “Here, I can’t find zira [a kind of cumin] and the coriander is not the same as it is over there,” said the chef, who also imports wild cherry tree leaves, which are picked when they are not yet green in the steppes, for her infusions. Her favourite dish – plov – is made with pilaf rice, meat, vegetables, herbs and spices. It was listed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016. You can try it all year round, but the best time is on the 4th of April, Kazakhstan’s national day. On this day, Natalya organises a big party with traditional singers, attended by the council of Kazakhstan in Lyon.