An exotic adventure in Camberwell

I have to confess to feeling a little out of my comfort zone when writing about a restaurant whose name I can barely pronounce.

Kyrgyz Kazakh House serves, as the name suggests, Kyrgyz and Kazakh food, in a slightly unprepossessing location on Camberwell Road. The two countries neighbour each other and have fairly similar cuisine. I've never experienced either before, although those not liking the unfamiliar will probably see a few dishes that they recognise - the menu also has dishes that crop up in Turkish, Russian and Uzbek cuisine.

Starters have particularly Turkish influences - such as kisir (a bulghur wheat salad flavoured with tomatoes and parsley), cacik (the Turkish equivalent of tzatziki), and imam bayildi (a poetically-named aubergine and tomato dish, also found in much of the Arab world). We tried a dish whose name now escapes me, but it consisted of aubergine, pepper, potato and courgette, topped with yoghurt and tomato sauce. I'd expected more of a stew, but the ingredients were cooked individually so that they held their shape and flavour. A flat, cheese-filled pastry was dirty but good - somewhere between a pizza base and a pastry in texture, filled with one of those salty, slightly bland cheeses that you find everywhere in south-eastern Europe. Staying with the stuffed theme, we had some stuffed vine leaves, which were much like any other example of their kind, but none the worse for that.

Kisir

Main courses include plov, a central Asian dish of pieces of beef (or mutton) served with shredded carrots and rice, grilled meats, and various dumplings. There are samsi, like meat-stuffed samosas, manti, a bit like giant dim sum stuffed with carrots, onion and swede, and various other permutations of dough and meat. The manti were served with sour cream and, more unexpectedly, quite a spicy tomato salsa.

The exotic cuisine is lent an added sense of adventure by the fact that you have to plunge into the bowels of an unassuming hotel to actually find the restaurant. It was quiet when we visited, which I suspect might be linked to the fact that there is no sign from the street that there is actually a restaurant within, let alone a menu in the window. Once you do find it, it's a pleasant surprise, with characterful decor, bright fabrics and even a fish pond making up for the lack of windows.

We didn't strictly need dessert, but we were here for new experiences, so we went for the chak-chak, a Kazakh dessert described on the menu as "the lightest of pastry dishes". I found it a curious thing, to be honest: a sort of cake made of fried dough balls, raisins and whole almonds, mixed with syrup. It wasn't unpleasant, but the texture didn't really do it for me, and it won't displace baklava (also on the menu) as my syrup-and-pastry-based dessert of choice.

The wine list features several Georgian and Turkish wines. We tried the house white from Georgia, a medium dry tipple made from Rkatsiteli grapes, and found it very pleasant, and decent value for £13 a bottle. Prices are reasonable, with starters around £3.50 or so and main courses mostly at the £8 to £10 mark. Service was sweetly efficient.

So I can't claim to give a definitive verdict, given my ignorance about the food of, well, any country beginning with K. But it tasted good to me.

Kyrgyz Kazakh House Restaurant at Pasha Hotel
158 Camberwell Road
London
SE5 0EE
02072772228