Supermarkets don’t offer much that’s particularly appealing for making picnics. It’s cheap food, full of junk and not gourmet at all. If you follow Yuka, I think you’ll be on a diet the whole trip.
Bringing some pâtés, some cured meats is a good idea... Some freeze-dried meals for certain evenings too...
Dinners in guesthouses usually boil down to the same old cucumber-tomato salad, a soup, and a light noodle or rice dish where you’re searching for the meat... Meat that’s usually tough and unidentifiable. Beef?
The bread is stale, and there’s no dessert or fruit.
Breakfasts always revolve around eggs or even porridge... The homemade jam is usually good, though.
Tea is the number one drink, followed by kompot (a drink made from fruit),
Kompot is an old staple drink across the former Russian and Byzantine world. Just go to Poland, where it’s still the most traditional and popular fruit-based drink—even before industrial pressed juices took over—and it’s still homemade.
The Russians brought the kompot habit with them at the end of the Middle Ages.
There’s also *mors(e)* морс, a dilution of macerated berries. Pressed juice is *sok* сок (possibly related to the Latin *succus*, which gave us *suc* in French).
For food shopping in Central Asia, you’ll still head to the market or bazaar, even though supermarkets have popped up in big cities. You can also order groceries online at Globus:
https://globus-online.kg.
The food sections of bazaars are like covered Russian or Spanish markets—halls with vendors selling vegetables, fruits, dairy, meats, etc. In a city, look for the *bazar* or *rynok* (the Slavic word for market).
Otherwise, in supermarkets like Globus, there’s no more "junk" than at Carrefour or Leclerc—just different products. You’ll find Russian camembert, Russian Maasdam, even Russian parmesan...
With their sanctions, the EU politburo has no idea what they’ve unleashed. By making the EU-Belarus/Russia border nearly impassable and banning EU agricultural freight, while Russians ramp up their own production of French, Spanish, and Italian cheeses and cured meats, it’s now easier and cheaper to buy Russian products in Central Asia. Hence the abundance of Russian cheeses at Globus. Hilarious. And this won’t be fixed anytime soon. The Silk Road is over. Marco Polo must be rolling in his grave.
I mention Polo and the Silk Road because in Osh, there’s a crowd boarding shared 4x4s for the High Pamir, and Kyrgyzstan is one of the key road hubs for Chinese truckers.
The Silk Road in Kazakh and Kyrgyz is *jibek joly* жібек жолы—it’s also the name of a main street in central Almaty.
Kyrgyz and Kazakh cuisine is simple and hearty. It’s not the Mediterranean, where everything grows—here, you’ve got high mountains (or, for Kazakhs, steppes with extreme temperature swings) and a semi-nomadic heritage. So: meat stews or broths, soups, *lagman* and other noodle dishes (Chinese influence), and *manty*, a variant of big Chinese dumplings. Same in Russia, where *pelmeni* (via Siberia) are another simpler derivative.
The other influence comes from the edges of medieval Persian culture to the south: Uzbekistan. More vegetables and rice here. For example, *plov*—pilafs.
And *samsa*, meat or veggie-filled pastries similar to samosas.
For local eateries, don’t look for *ресторан* but *чайхана*. *Restaurant* is more of a European bourgeois concept, and you won’t necessarily eat better there, though some are decent.
If you’re craving good cured sausages, you’d have to go to Haute-Loire or Ardèche. The idea of finding that kind of charcuterie in Kyrgyzstan is absurd—or, as we’d say, *khônnerie*. Might as well ask for *caillette*...
On the other hand, pâté in KG and KZ is no problem—another Russian influence: паштет (or *pasztet* in Polish; say *pachtète*). For pork-based versions, ask for specific shops/butchers, but in big cities. In smaller towns, unless a Russian is making it locally, it’s not happening.
