Tajikistan: Dushanbe’s Vegetarian Safe Haven

Vegetarians in Central Asia must often explain to well-meaning restaurant staff that chicken and lamb (even when it’s ground) are meat. The idea that someone would purposely choose to avoid eating meat can be perplexing in a region where lamb, beef and sometimes horse are considered the heart of any good meal. Vegetarians have been known to swoon with joy over a plate of fried eggs at a truck stop -- after politely pushing aside the greasy hot dogs, of course.

Vegans? Stay at home. 

In this desolate landscape, impoverished Tajikistan offers some traditional peasant fare that gives solace to Central Asia’s meat-avoiders, and anyone else looking for an alternative to shashlik.

Not just any eatery will do. In Dushanbe, seek out a café called Hojiyon – “pilgrims” in Tajik – in the city’s 112th “micro-district,” a Soviet-built suburb of faded, five-story cement blocks surrounded by kitchen gardens and rusting playgrounds. 

Hojiyon’s specialties are kurtob and shakarob -- similar dishes, both eaten from shared wooden bowls, usually by hand. Kurtob is a jumble of flaky bread called fatir, fresh tomato and onion, oil (your choice of flax seed or vegetable) and kefir, a mildly fermented milk drink. A bit lighter and less soupy is the shakarob – fatir, tomatoes, onion and yoghurt, without the oil. Add salt and slices of hot, green pepper to taste. The result brings to mind a Central Asian take on Tuscan panzanella, a mushy salad of day-old ciabatta, tomatoes, onions and vinaigrette whose name comes from the word for “little swamp.” 

At the center of any Central Asian meal is brick-oven bread, usually called naan, non, nun, or just lepyoshka – flat, sometimes flaky, sometimes doughy, always fresh. At Hojiyon, the layered, buttery fatir comes not only steeped in kurtob and shakarob, but served hot as an appetizer-cum-accompaniment to the meal. 

These dishes are celebrated not because they are vegetarian, but because they are good. Of course, they are served with tea – your choice of green or black. 

Hojiyon -- a simple chaikhana, or teahouse, with plastic outdoor tables under a tarp -- opened in 1995, said manager Zohir Safarov during a recent lunchtime visit. 

 

“Every day people eat grilled meat and sausage, but sometimes you feel you must eat something that is your own, that is historical, and you come here,” he says of the kurtob and shakarob, which he calls Tajikistan’s “national dishes.”  

Customers say they come from all over Dushanbe for Hojiyon’s kurtob and shakarob.

“There are only a few places in Dushanbe that make good kurtob, and this is one of them,” said Alisher Tochiev, 25, who has been driving across town since he was a teenager to enjoy both dishes, which he says he alternates depending on his mood. 

Asked why he and his two friends were eating from their common bowl with spoons, which the waitresses will provide upon request, he said, “Sure, it’s tastier with your hand, but this is not the cleanest place, so we use a spoon.”

Hojiyon also serves Central Asian staples like shurpo, a hearty lamb-and-potato soup, the meat-and-rice pilaf known locally as plov, and manti, or meat dumplings, each with a local interpretation. In Tajikistan, the plov, for example, is often cooked with dried apricots and carrots. “Plov is like Islam,” explained an elderly customer: “Everyone has their own type.” 

A note to female visitors: You may feel more comfortable in conservative dress. The waitresses wear close-fitting headscarves and loose tunics, which have become more common in recent years in Dushanbe. Indeed, Hojiyon leans so conservative that Safarov, the manager, forbade the author of this review, a male, from entering the kitchen, where “the women are pure.” (This is not, therefore, a place to order beer or “white tea” – the code term for a round of vodkas camouflaged in a teapot, as available in more liberal chaikhanas.)

A full meal costs approximately $3-$4 per person. Hojiyon, located on Alisher Navoi Street in the 112th Microrayon, is open till 11 pm.