Lamb skewers glistening with fat over charcoal fire

Hands tearing warm bread with steam escaping

Tower of golden plov rice crowned with quail eggs

Charcoal tandyr glowing orange from within

Grandmother's hands rolling dough on a floured wooden board

Glass of green tea being poured from height

Table from above covered with twelve Central Asian dishes

Pomegranate seeds scattered on a brass tray

Ashgabat · New York City

The Spread
Is Ready.

Hand-pulled lagman. Weekly plov. Lamb roasted over charcoal since morning. A table where every dish carries a story from the Karakum.

OpenTue – Sun

Seats24 only

Reserve Your Seat at the Dastarkhan

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Est. Ashgabat · 1987

Built from smoke
and clay.

Charcoal tandyr glowing deep orange from within its clay walls

Every bread that leaves our kitchen was shaped against the inner wall of a tandyr fired with saxaul wood — the same desert shrub that heated homes in the Karakum for centuries.

The clay holds heat differently than any oven. It breathes. The bread blisters and chars in the exact spots where the wall curves, which means no two flatbreads are identical — and every one carries the thumbprint of the baker who pressed it in.

800°Tandyr heat

90 secPer flatbread

The Table

Dishes that tell
their own story.

Karakum Valley

Plov

The rice toasts first.

Long-grain rice hits the kazan dry, stirring constantly until each grain turns the color of weak tea. Only then does the lamb fat pour in — a slow hiss, then silence. Carrots are cut thick as a thumb, never grated. The zirvak simmers for an hour before the rice ever touches it.

Changes weekly. Ask what the lamb ate.

Silk Road kitchens

Lagman

Pulled by hand. Still steaming.

The dough rests for forty minutes before anyone touches it. Then it is pulled — not cut, not extruded — stretched thin over a floured board until the noodles are the width of a shoelace and the length of an arm. They go straight from hand to boiling water to bowl.

Broth made from the morning's lamb bones.

Low and slow over charcoal

Lamb Shoulder

The fat renders into silk.

A full shoulder goes over charcoal at six in the morning. By noon the connective tissue has dissolved. The meat does not fall off the bone — it releases, which is different. We serve it with sumac and a flatbread that has been blistered in the same heat.

Available Friday and Saturday only.

The Room

Overhead view of a full Dastarkhan table covered with twelve Central Asian dishes

The table is set.
The chair is waiting.

We seat twenty-four at a time. The corner table by the window books out on Fridays before Tuesday. The plov changes each week — sometimes yellow with turmeric, sometimes dark with dried barberries. The only way to know is to be there.

Reserve Your Seat at the Dastarkhan

A single empty chair at a beautifully set table, waiting for the next guest

"The best meal is the one you almost missed."

Book your table

Reserve Your Seat
at the Dastarkhan

We seat twenty-four guests. Walk-ins welcome when space allows — but Friday evenings disappear by Tuesday.

The SpreadIs Ready.

Built from smokeand clay.

Dishes that telltheir own story.