Keen For Chicken?

The Fergana Valley is famous for its traditional pottery, hand-woven silks, expertly-crafted knives and seasonal produce. Its strategic position between the surrounding mountains in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan makes it both a politically divisive region and also an agriculturally significant one. The valley's fertile landscape is a stark contrast to the expansive desert plains I passed on my twenty-one hour train journey from Khiva, in the country's west, to Margilan, a town at the centre of the Fergana Valley.

Seeing the abundant late-Summer produce in the huge Thursday morning bazaar, I decided on that evening to take full advantage of my location and indulge in the culinary delights of the region.

At around eight in the evening I left for dinner. My guest house was near the train station, a ten minute marshrutka (shared-taxi) ride to the centre of town, where all the restaurants were. That was a journey too arduous for that time of night. The guesthouse had a restaurant menu for a place that would deliver food to the guesthouse but that felt like a tourist trap.

So I decided I would eat at one of the places around the corner from where I was staying. When I announced my plans no one else from the guest house wanted to join me for my culinary quest. If I was going into the main town they would come, but not to the places nearby. This might have been a sign of things to come.

Walking down the double-lane main road that ran towards the train station, I had a few options to begin with. There was a kebab place that, at the late hour of eight o'clock, still had two patrons. There was also '#1 Burger' which was closing for the night and 'City Burger.' The latter seemed to be misrepresenting itself since we weren't even in the main part of the city and the city we were talking about wasn't really a city. So I kept heading down the road in search of more options. There had to be something better.

After another five minutes down the road I had reached the end of the options in the immediate area. There was a convenience store selling drinks and chocolates and next to it was an alcohol shop. Although, in this more-conservative part of Uzbekistan, I questioned who would ever be buying alcohol. Next to the unfrequented liquor store, though, was 'Burger Club.'

Burger Club felt like the place to go. Its very title spoke frankly of an elitism that enticed me. I didn't want the best burger, I wanted a burger that only club members could have. Whilst I wouldn't usually join a club that would have me as a member, I would join if they had burgers.

When I got inside I realised that the club was so elite that no one else had bothered showing up to the clubhouse that night. Just the place! With peeling wallpaper, dirty vinyl floors and torn diner booths, I felt comforted knowing that the owners must have invested their money on making the very best food, not wasting it on unnecessary extravagances like mops. The bright neon strip lighting, or at least the bits that were working, ensured I would get a good view of the food. Mood lighting is just an attempt to hide the chef's flaws. With bright, white light I could appreciate the delicate morsels that would soon pass through my lips.

A neon lamp flickered as I entered the seemingly empty room. But the room was not empty. Upon entering, I noticed a couch inside the door and a young man sitting on it, playing the video game 'Call Of Duty' on his phone. "Ahh," I thought to myself, "the maitre d'."

The boy looked up at me with eyes that said "what are you doing here." Some might have found this off putting but it was this type of exclusivity that I had anticipated. All the fancy places are known for their intimidating waitstaff. Any sort of riffraff could patronise City Burger, but Burger Club was a place for the elite. Insisting that he stay seated, I made my way to the other end of the dining room, appreciating the restrained, unobtrusive customer service.

At the back wall of the restaurant was an opening to the kitchen with photographs of menu items above it. Inside stood a man similarly engaged in mobile phone-based warfare. I assumed he was the chef but also that he would also be taking my order. You see, in only the best restaurants the line between chef and waiter is blurred. It's similar to how, at Noma, the chefs who prepare your food also deliver it to the table.

The chef/waiter watched as I stood in front of his window. I glanced at the board and made my first offer. "I'll have the lavash." "I don't have," he responded in English which surprised me but then I reminded myself, once again, that this was Burger Club, not City Burger. They were used to getting an international crowd. I looked behind him to the empty kebab spit. The place must have been so popular that they ran out of key items earlier in the evening.

I started making my way through the menu, selecting an item and hearing "I don't have," in response. It was an exciting game of cat and mouse, and I was loving it. Eventually he decided to take the reins. Looking to the empty bench behind that had no hot dogs on it he suggested, "I have hot dogs." I made an unexcited face. "I also have KFC."

KFC was quite popular in the many burger places I'd passed by in Uzbekistan. I'd seen it on menus in restaurants too. In a cuisine that mostly consisted of bread, beef, mutton and horse, chicken was the closest cousin of the seldom-seen vegetable. Fried chicken was the healthy choice. Fried chicken was an emerging facet of nouveau-Uzbek cuisine. And that's despite KFC really just being regular fried chicken (RFC). The 'K' in KFC was just there for flair.

I inspected the image on the menu for KFC. In contrast to the colour images on the rest of the menu, the KFC photo was in sepia tones. It took a moment for me to realise that, no, it was a colour image. It was just that there was nothing close to vegetables in sight in the KFC box which consisted of fried chicken, french fries and an empty, quartered hamburger bun. It would be sepia tones in real life too.

So I ordered the KFC box. I then removed a can of coke from the self-service refrigerator and took a seat at one of the many available tables. Straight out of the fridge, the coke was not so cold. Clearly the restaurant was afraid of customers' brain-freeze and instead had kept beverages at the optimum temperature for consumption. I appreciated this detail.

In the fast-food establishment with no customers, the meal took about twenty minutes to prepare but, boy, was it worth the wait! The box, now transplanted onto a tray, came just as the menu image had anticipated. Free of obtrusions such as vegetables or colours that weren't brown, I was left to enjoy my meal. Under the white neon lights, I unwrapped each chicken tender before eating, appreciating that each piece had been cooked through.