Mukaddes Yadikar from Etles Restaurant in London preparing laghman handmade noodles, a staple of Uygur kitchens. Photo: Mike Clarke

At Etles in Walthamstow and Dilara in Finsbury Park, the owners offer dishes that give Londoners insight into Uygur traditions, culture and religion
The city has proved a welcoming place to introduce Uygur cuisine thanks to its cosmopolitan food scene and gastronomically curious population

SCMP, Apr 8 2019

Lucy Morgan  

Restaurateur Mukaddes Yadikar looks through her dining room window, framed with loops of brightly patterned fabric, as a cold, bleak sky darkens above the rain-stained pavements of northeast London. “We love England,” she says.
Yadikar is from Yili prefecture in northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. She is Uygur, a member of a Muslim Turkic ethnic group estimated to comprise almost half Xinjiang’s population of around 20 million.
She met her husband, Ablikim Rahman, in Turkey, and moved to England in 2010 to join him in Manchester, where he was studying.

Keen to open a Uygur restaurant, Yadikar felt that London – with its diverse and gastronomically curious population – would be the best place. When the couple opened Etles in April 2017, there was only one other Uygur restaurant in the country: Karamay, which opened in 2015 in the central English city of Leicester.

Ablikim Rahman outside the restaurant he runs with his wife. Photo: Mike Clarke

Etles was London’s first authentic Uygur restaurant. Yadikar would have preferred central London, but it was beyond her budget. Instead she chose the Walthamstow district, which had been gaining a reputation as a culinary destination that offered a choice of international cuisines. She named her 35-seat space Etles, after the colourful Uygur fabric she uses to make curtains and table runners.
Traditional Uygur cuisine is heavy on starch and meat. Halal lamb, beef and chicken is placed onto skewers and roasted or stewed. Little is wasted: kidneys make tender kebabs, marinated ox tripe is served cold, and lamb hoof is cooked slowly to make a comforting stew.

Soups and sauces often feature tomatoes, peppers and aubergines. The main spices are black, white and Sichuan pepper, salt, ginger, garlic, and red pepper. Staples include handmade noodles, dumplings, pastry and rice.
The menu at Etles is illustrated with photographs of the impressive Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, Xinjiang, and glorious vistas of rivers and mountains. The last time Yadikar visited Xinjiang was four years ago.

“I miss my hometown very much, but currently there are political problems,” she says, without elaborating. “I would love to go home every holiday. Xinjiang has such beautiful spaces.”

Rahman cooking a traditional Uygur dish. Photo: Mike Clarke

United Nations experts say a million Uygurs and members of other Muslim ethnic minorities have been held against their will in internment camps in Xinjiang. Beijing says only that it runs vocational training centres in the region aimed at combating Islamist extremism.
Business at Etles was slow to begin with, but now Yadikar regularly sees queues of curious diners waiting for a chance to taste her exotic menu.
“In the first year that we were open, a few English people came and then returned and brought their friends. We have some Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi guests, as well as a good number of Chinese students who really love our food,” she says.
Every dish on Etles’ menu is made from scratch. Yadikar rolls dough, stretching it into long strands, which she slaps against the steel counter then twists into a skein of wheat noodles. Known as laghman noodles – though there are multiple spellings in English – they are a staple of Uygur kitchens. They are either boiled or stir-fried before being served with delicious beef and capsicum sauce.

When people taste this [Uygur polu dish] they will understand from its filling and warming qualities that it comes from a place where people need to survive cold spells. It’s like a geography lesson.Allah Bardi, chef, Dilara in London

Another traditional dish on the menu, ding ding chao mian, comprises the same noodles chopped into tiny pieces and mixed with meat and vegetables.
Yadikar makes noodles every morning using Turkish flour, the closest she can find to that which she used in Xinjiang.
“I can’t buy products from Xinjiang any more,” she says. “I wish I could get hold of the cumin and the pepper from the region for my cooking, as the flavour of the spices is quite distinctive. I have to buy these things from the Chinese market now.”
Etles gives Yadikar the opportunity both to preserve her culture and share it with her guests. The walls, for example, are decorated with traditional Uygur artefacts: fabric hats, stringed instruments and tapestries depicting people dancing, singing and playing music.
“English people love this decor,” she says. “They seem very interested in other cultures. People come to the restaurant and they know nothing [about Uygur people]. They ask, ‘Where do you live? What sort of people are you?’ And then, because we live in China, they say, ‘You are Chinese? But your food is very different!’ … because our language, culture and food are very different to the Han Chinese.”

Rahman at Etles. Photo: Mike Clarke

Running a restaurant had not been her dream as a young girl. “I studied linguistics, first at Minzu University of China in Beijing. Then I moved to Istanbul to complete further study in Turkic languages and linguistics,” she says.
Although there are no official statistics for the number of Uygur living in Britain, Yadikar estimates the population at between 300 and 400. “There aren’t many of us here,” she says.
London’s only other Uygur restaurant is Dilara, in Finsbury Park, close to the Finsbury Park Mosque.
Dilara is a larger space, with a takeaway counter offering grilled meats and a substantial kitchen at the rear. It was originally a Turkish restaurant, and Uygur couple Amangul Haxim and husband Ablat Mamatniyaz decided to keep the name and menu when they took over the property two-and-a-half years ago.

Amangul Haxim at her restaurant, Dilara, in Finsbury Park, London. Photo: Mike Clarke

“We had a number of regular customers who enjoyed Turkish food and we wanted them to keep visiting,” Haxim says. “But after a year we started offering a few Uygur dishes, and they were popular. So we invited a very well known chef from Xinjiang to come and cook for us. He calls himself Allah Bardi.”
Allah Bardi is a fourth-generation chef from a Uygur culinary dynasty. He ran a restaurant near Xinjiang University in Urumqi, the region’s capital, and became famous for his traditional dishes.
After a decade cooking in Istanbul, he moved to London in January 2018. Impressed by the city’s cosmopolitan food scene, he is keen to share his cuisine with locals.
“[Since the crackdown] most Uygur people haven’t been able to go abroad and share their culture. This is my chance to introduce Uygur dishes to London,” he says.

Haxim cooking up Uygur specialities. Photo: Mike Clarke

“You can learn so much from food,” Allah Bardi adds. “Not just the history of what people eat, traditions or their family favourites, but on a broader level about climate and religion. Take the Uygur polu that I cook here – a rich lamb, carrot and rice dish. It is designed to ward off the cold.”
This dish speaks of chilly winters in Xinjiang, he says. “When people taste this they will understand from its filling and warming qualities that it comes from a place where people need to survive cold spells. It’s like a geography lesson.”

Haxim and husband Ablat Mamatniyaz at Dilara. Photo: Mike Clarke

Allah Bardi claims he can cook 500 traditional Uygur dishes – only a fraction of which are on his menu – and that all of them are popular.
One of his most requested menu items is da pan ji (big plate chicken) – a double-carb feast of stewed chicken, potatoes and broad, handmade ribbon noodles.
“It came from Sichuan province,” he says. “But people in Xinjiang started cooking it and adding more spices. It became popular, so people think it is actually a Uygur dish. In fact, we just perfected it.”

Haxim and Mamatniyaz preparing handmade noodles at Dilara. Photo: Mike Clarke

Allah Bardi is proud of the consistency of Uygur cuisine, saying the traditional recipes have not changed for centuries.
“The sauces, the ingredients are the same, and we make everything by hand – even the chilli sauce.”
He presents a bowl of rust-coloured lamb broth, rich, comforting and peppery with flecks of fresh, fragrant coriander leaves. It is the soup base for chochure, stuffed dumplings that fall somewhere on the spectrum between an Italian tortellini and a Chinese wonton.
The dumplings are filled with chopped mutton and scented with cumin. The soup is more like the gravy from a rich lamb stew, and the dumplings become juicy from the broth.

Haxim and Mamatniyaz making noodles. Photo: Mike Clarke

Back at Etles, I ask Yadikar about her culinary qualifications.
“In Yili, girls learn to cook and how to keep house from a young age,” she says. “It’s the tradition. By the time I was in high school I could cook everything.”
Her husband stands at the stove roasting peanuts in a wok for a spicy gong bao ji ding chicken dish. It’s one of the classic Chinese dishes served at Etles, but Yadikar says the Uygur food has become the most popular.
“Running a restaurant is hard work,” she says. “It is the same every day – making noodles, making dumplings and samosas, preparing sauces. But I don’t mind. For me, the most important thing is that I can introduce my Uygur culture and food to people.”