Jen - I think I figured out how to do that. Let me know if it doesn’t seem to work.
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“We’re probably naive, but we were puzzled and put off by the waiter at Urgut Osh Markazi showing up the minute we sat down and just standing there looking at us while we tried to study the complicated menu.”
Talking to myself here, but I found more evidence that that’s just how the waiters operate in Uzbekistan.
Toni and I were researching Tashkent restaurants and looking at the online reviews for Ishtixon Zig’ir Plov (which Jen Kalb suggested we check out). Toni ran across this review, which I think is pretty funny in its rigidity, impatience, and judgmentalism:
“It’s pretty much a fast food restaurant kind of atmosphere. As soon as we sat down, the waitress was harassing us to give an immediate order. We needed time to translate the menu. When we decided our three dishes, it turned out that they didn’t have any of them available. Apparently they had only two dishes available. Looking around at other diners, who were eating lots of different things, I couldn’t understand what on earth was going on, so we left for Dunyo across the street and had a great meal.”
So if the waiter just stands and looks at y’all on Thursday at Urgut Osh Markazi, don’t be like this guy.
Another Google review for the same plov restaurant, automatically translated from the Uzbek by Google Translate, shows the challenges we are going to have with understanding menus in Uzbek:
“We cooked flax soup and came with the hair of the cook. As for the wedding dinner, the butts of the mutton were put there. So I would not give advice.”
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Urgut Osh Markazi on Thursday at 3:00 is good for me. 4:00 is fine, too.
I’d planned to walk through the neighborhood beforehand, so I’ll certainly have a look at Fortune Supermarket. I note, too, that Tashkent Supermarket, which is hard to beat, now has a location down the block.
we will probably do the same - given that maybe 330 or 4 is a better meeting time?
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4pm is good for us (Ginny’s coming too).
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thats great - Jim is coming too.
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It’s great that Jim is coming. It seems like quite a few of the Uzbeks in New York are from Samarkand or Bukhara. If the servers are from either place, Jim can communicate with them in Tajik/Persian.
We had no idea whether they were speaking Uzbek or Tajik at Urgut Osh Markazi. Either is incomprehensible to us, but I think Uzbek might be exceptionally hard to translate. Or at least Google Translate seems to have a very hard time with it. Here are some reviews of Ishtixon Ziq’ir Plov, a Tashkent restaurant that we’re checking out, as Google translates them from the Uzbek:
“We cooked flax soup and came with the hair of the cook. As for the wedding dinner, the butts of the mutton were put there. So I would not give advice.”
“The administrator was shouting and fighting among the workers very loudly. it made us very sad. they sprinkled a lot of osvejitel in the place where they ate. he couldn’t even eat his food. Throats and noses were filled with the smell of fresh vegetables. 30 minutes into this kitchen, you’ll know it’s a lack of ingenuity. Powar should be told to add grams to the portion while the soup is floating.”
“I was thinking that I would only eat the wedding table, but the linen table is perfect 
the place is comfortable, easy to use, 5 …”
“Osh voobshche doda, each grain of rice has a meaning, it is placed in a rosa oshkozon with onions, obslujivaniya zhor, Osh that is chewed on Thursday!!!”
We had been planning to use Google Translate to help with Uzbek, but our confidence in that plan is now pretty shaky.
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Sounds excellent!
In Uzbek and even Russian, Georgian spots across Brooklyn, locals more often than not, come with a general idea of what they want or at least what they want to start (kompot, salad…). Many dont even open the menus. So maybe the waiters do this out of habit if not anything else
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Maybe so. We never saw that in Tbilisi, but maybe we were such obvious tourists that they adjusted their routine.
Ike: I assume that means you’re joining us? That makes 6.
Yep, I’m in!
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Plus @FlemSnopes @Ike @SteveR et al. With all respect, for those of us not involved in these get togethers, can’t you do this planning off the site? (Or a dedicated thread?)
After a few days off this site I see 20 posts. Many are about scheduling. The rest, Uzbekistan.
Many thanks. Have a lovely time!
Welcome back! Did you have any good eats to share since you were last here?
I agree that dedicated meetup threads (or taking it into DM/PMs) might be a good idea.
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I’m in Montauk/The Hamptons on the eastern end of Long Island, in NY state. Just had a good tuna poke bowl with wakame at Gurney’s. But it’s not relevant to this board so will limit my thoughts. 
And the reprimand, again, from the same source as my prior reprimand here.
I was expecting this, not because any of this discussion does not relate to New York, but because it goes beyond the boundaries of NYC and treats the city as one particularly fascinating part of the larger world. (A world that extends beyond just London, Paris, the south of France, Tuscany, and San Francisco.)
You said earlier you were boycotting this thread because I talked about North Carolina barbecue in it – even though that discussion always directly related to New York food, with a comparison to food elsewhere. I guess that boycott is over.
Having to worry in discussions about whether certain inviolable but hard-to-ascertain boundaries have been crossed seems very much contrary to what New York City is, at least for me as an outsider to New York.
But the majority rules. If the consensus is that there should be rules restricting discussions in this forum, which was expressly opened as a catch-all forum, let’s articulate what those rules are.
If those rules are too restrictive for my personal taste, I can go elsewhere. Hungry Onion is all about letting a thousand flowers bloom.
But until those rules are concretely set out where I can understand them, maybe you could explore other ways of keeping me (and others) in line.
These aren’t “rules” so much as a means to keep the site as useful as possible. I agree that a “planning a restaurant visit” thread should be created if one is planning a restaurant visit. If for no other reason than a person looking for information about an upcoming restaurant visit would not think to look for it here.
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This thread, because it is catch-all by definition, will only be found by people doing searches for specific things they are interested in.
Also, note that the objection was not just to including planning discussions here, but to mention of “Uzbekistan.”
GForce’s prior objections to my posts had nothing to do with trip planning, but because I was discussing non-NYC barbecue in the context of NYC barbecue.
Here is the prior objection by GForce to my posts, which he/she/they elevated to the moderators, which had nothing to do with trip planning:
“Maybe we can move all the discussion of BBQ in general to its own thread? This is Good Eats NYC. Lots of good BBQ chat though for others interested. @moderators”
And this as well, in another thread
“Thank you. I stopped following that thread [Good Eats NYC 2024]. Too much non nyc chit chat for my taste. Hence, the separate post.”
I am reminded of the famous New Yorker cover:
We have a number of threads dedicated to various outings, and reports on said outings. We also have threads devoted to particular cuisines. This thread is defined by its OP as
i.e., a place to post about restaurant meals in NYC.
I’m not going to go back and forth on this anymore, but I am firmly on the side of “let’s try to keep things to one topic as best we can.”
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