Uzbekistan restaurant in Daegu

On Saturday we tried something new, a new restaurant, new food and more importantly, new beer. Wandering through the streets of down town Daegu looking for a bite to eat we once more passed through an area that is home to a Daegu Uzbekistan restaurant.


Also, I've been pining for more European cuisine. It's hard to get decent European food in Korea, never mind the insular Daegu. In Korea many restaurants that claim to serve Italian, French or even Spanish style food often give you a combination of European food made to suit Korean palates. Often the results are disappointing messes.



I've always been curious as to what they serve and how good it would be but never took the plunge until now. The food wasn't fantastic though this is perhaps partially due to the dishes we chose. Not being able to read Russian and not strictly trusting the Korean translation I chose foods that resembled more Western foods. This was a mistake. The food was a bit bland but I think I would go again to try more authentic dishes. What we ordered did not seem to us to be representative of Russian/Uzbekistan food but we could be wrong. The dumplings were good, containing discernible meat but the rest left me a bit flat.



Onto more important matters, the beer. Never having been anywhere near Russia and never having has the chance to sample one of their brews I jumped at the chance to sample the beer. The Korean translation read "Russian beer" so I didn't know what brands were available.



The waitress asked if I wanted strong or normal. I chose strong and the wife chose normal. I was expecting a 5/5.5% lager. What I got was a mighty 8%, and it tasted pretty good. I associate beers of that strength back in the UK to be unpleasant, tasting more like a bitter treacle but this was light. After a while I began to feel like I was drinking 8% beer but I would definitely drink this stuff again.



It's worth pointing out that this was a big beer, 500ml, not the normal 330mls you get in most bars and it was only 5,ooo won. A Bargain. After doing some research on Wikipedia I have found that the beer I drank was Baltika 9 (Krepkoe) and my wife drank the Baltika 7 (Export Beer).


If you are in the area and fancy a change, this place may not or may not meet your needs but its worth a look at, especially if you are missing European style food.

The restaurant name is Samarkand