Let us first address the elephant in the room, I am not vegetarian. I am a pescetarian. For the most part I lead a vegetarian diet, but not all the time. This means that I can eat stuff like sushi, or fried fish. This already puts me in a much better spot than actual “proper” vegetarians who steer clear from any and all meat, and eons ahead of vegans. I certainly had an excellent time in Uzbekistan food-wise, and luckily most of my fondest memories were of vegetarian dishes.
All of this is to say that despite having a very meat-oriented cuisine, Uzbekistan’s touristic cities are not some sort of hell for vegetarians as some may make you believe. People increasingly start to understand what it means to eat without meat, though you will still sometimes run into situations where “no meat” just means “yes chicken” in some waiters’ minds… In any case, let me now share a few general tips and tricks about keeping a vegetarian diet in Uzbekistan, but if you want to learn more about specific eateries then you are better off visiting my guides to eating out at Bukhara, Samarkand, and the more oriental and occidental food options in Tashkent!
- Know that there is always something meatless around the corner, in every single touristic town of Uzbekistan. These include but are not limited to Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara, all of which I visited personally and thus can vouch for. These cities attract more and more Indian and otherwise Hindu tourists as the years pass on, which means that they have to introduce more options for people who do not eat meat. In all of these cities it is easy to find an Indian restaurant, and the one named Salom Namaste in Bukhara offers some of the best Indian cuisine that I had the privilege of tasting so far.
- If your tummy is not good with spices, you can always go for some Italian food, namely pizza and pasta which are both readily available all around as well. Pizza UZ in Samarkand especially excels in making a mean pizza pie, and there are some decent options in the capital as well, such as Syrovarnya.
- Given the rise of Asian tourists in the country, it is also quite easy to find a Chinese or Korean eatery in most of these cities, which often have some vegetarian options on their menus such as rice cakes from Korea and mapo tofu from China. If you eat fish like I do, you can also just go for Japanese restaurants and get yourself some surprisingly decent sushi at Tashkent, which was a much welcome change for my taste buds.
- Now, some of you may be wondering when I will start writing about Uzbek cuisine itself. I cannot, not really. There are not much truly meat-free options there to suggest. There is hanum (pictured above), which is a dumpling filled with vegetables and sometimes served with a tomato sauce or smetana. It is an interesting dish but, in all honesty, nothing I would eat again. It could have tasted better if prepared at home I guess, with some more fulfilling fillings no less. The good news is there is a place called Old City Restaurant in Samarkand which can make most Uzbek dishes meat-free, though their prices and portion sizes leave a lot to be desired. Moreover, apparently a place called Café 1991 in Tashkent does something similar with its menu, but I did not try it myself. Generally speaking, you can ask for stuff to be meat-free, but I would not trust most establishments to do it right. For example, you can simply not have meat on your plov, but do you really think that they will not just give you the same plov that was prepared with juices and fat from meat, and just remove the meat in the last second? I am not so sure about that… There are only a few select establishment that really seem to cater to vegetarians, but that is it.
- Other than these, you will always find some fresh loaf of tasty Uzbek bread all around, some soups will be vegetarian, and finding samsas with potatoes are a possibility everywhere. You can notice how all these things lack one thing, protein. It is really hard to suggest anything Uzbek, though it pains me since we are talking about Uzbekistan, but if you want your meals to be balanced it just makes much more sense to enjoy some Indian or Italian cuisines as you are visiting this otherwise fantastic country.
- Last but not least, you may be reassured to hear that most hotels offer a breakfast, and said breakfast is often vegetarian or can be made vegetarian. The quality of the produce differs, but I had no problems with breakfast in my extremely cheap stays in Bukhara and Samarkand, so you too should be fine with it.
Ultimately, I would not call Uzbekistan a hell for vegetarians, though it may be for vegans. Since it is a touristic destination that is certainly opening up to the world, what it means to be a vegetarian is being more readily understood these days, and more and more places that cater to such diets are opening every day. You will certainly have no issues in Tashkent with easy access to cuisines like Indian or Lebanese at your whim, and I am sure you will be positively surprised with the options you can find in smaller yet more touristic towns as well. At the end, do not let your diet dictate where you can and cannot go in the world, at least when it comes to Uzbekistan, any diet-related problems should be fixable with some research, with the sad exception of veganism, which still has a long way to go I am afraid.