The Nazi Restaurant

The Uyghurs are a Turkic people living in the Jinxiang Autonomous Region of China. This Chinese province is also know as East Turkistan. Uyghurs are Chinese muslims, though unwillingly Chinese. The owners of The Silk Road, the only Uyghur restaurant in town, look more Arabic than Asian. They refuse to serve tea in their restaurant. Too Chinese. But their menu is printed in both Chinese and English. When I've overheard conversations there, I think it's mandarin they speak.

My first exposure to Uyghur culture was at Sis' birthday dinner last year. Bro ordered food from The Silk Road, which introduced my taste buds to a whole new kind of cooking and use of spices. Since then, I've dined at the small, run-down restaurant with plastic flowers a couple of times and with each visit, I like their food more. But not so their service. I mean, the food is just downright delicious, clinging your to palate and beckoning you to savour every morsel, leaving you satisfied and wanting more. Nothing Indian about it.

Any reviews I've read about the restaurant talk about the politics of the Uyghurs, commend the great food, but condemn the terrible service. The owners are very particular about how you may come to dine at their restaurant, reminiscent of the Soup Nazi in a Seinfeld episode. For example, you must order the lamb pillow (a lamb shank with sticky rice and raisins) in advance, especially for take out. Despite the hole-in-the-wall-in-a stripmallness of the restaurant, they want you to make a reservation to eat there. You cannot be seated unless your whole party is present.

Once, we made a reservation for four but six of us showed up. Not only would they not accommodate us even though they had vacant tables, they were rude about it. Bro got so angry, he stormed out of the restaurant and swears to never eat there again. During that meal, we had to move the car in the middle of eating because someone complained it was blocking another car even though we had parked in a legal parking spot.

This week, when we went there, we were asked to move the car again before we even sat down because the waitress didn't like that it was parked by the front door of the restaurant despite that being a legal spot. Then she asked me if we had a reservation even though there were several empty tables in the restaurant. When I said no, I swear, she growled at me.

Every time she brought things to our table, she abandoned them brusquely in front of Sis' fiance, obstructing his use of the table surface and access to the food. She seemed to convey she found us politically offensive, or that she found us unworthy of eating their food.

Oh but the food is so damn good, damn it. The lamb kebobs on long skewers charred just right on the outside and tender inside, coated with mystery spice, the handmade broad noodles in sauce that make you lick your lips again and again, the sticky rice peppered with raisins and lamb. Would I suffer their abuse just to eat there? Yes, again and again.