Quick Bites
Rego Park isn’t just “another Queens neighborhood” — it’s the epicenter of New York’s Bukharian and Uzbek food scene, home to the largest Bukharian Jewish community outside of Uzbekistan. Here’s your cheat sheet:
- Cheburechnaya — 92-09 63rd Drive. The city’s benchmark for chebureki, horsemeat kebabs, and plov. Kosher.
- Marakand — 98-98 Queens Boulevard. Halal Uzbek, with plov so rich it arrives smelling like a holiday.
- Tandoori Food & Bakery — 99-04 63rd Road. Walk-in bakery with a real tandoor oven pumping out samsa and lepeshka bread all day.
- Chaikhana Sem Sorok — 63-52 Booth Street. A Bukharian kosher teahouse with a tanur oven actually built in Samarkand and shipped to Queens.
Why Rego Park
If you’ve only ever eaten Uzbek food at a Manhattan tasting menu pretending to be adventurous, you’ve never had Uzbek food. The real stuff lives along 63rd Drive and Queens Boulevard in Rego Park, where restaurants serve the neighborhood they live in — a community of Bukharian Jews and Central Asian immigrants whose families have been cooking this way for centuries. You’ll see grandfathers eating lunch alone, families of twelve crammed around a single round table, teenagers grabbing samsa after school. Nobody is performing for you.
The food is rice-heavy, meat-heavy, bread-heavy — the cuisine of a region where winters are brutal and calories are currency. Plov (a long-grained rice pilaf, slow-cooked with lamb, carrots, and spices in a cauldron called a kazan) is the unofficial national dish of Uzbekistan. Kebabs come skewered on flat swords that look like they belong in a museum. The bread — lepeshka — comes out of clay tandoor ovens that reach well over 600°F, and when it’s hot and cracker-crisp on the edges with a chewy middle, it’s one of the best bread experiences in the five boroughs.
Rego Park earned the nickname “Little Bukhara” for a reason. Here’s where to start.
Cheburechnaya — The Classic
92-09 63rd Drive, Rego Park, NY 11374
Founded in 2002 by two brothers from Tajikistan, Cheburechnaya has been the benchmark Uzbek restaurant in New York for over two decades. It’s been named one of NYC’s essential restaurants, and Central Asian food obsessives make pilgrimages here the way pizza people go to Di Fara.
The name comes from chebureki — deep-fried, half-moon-shaped turnovers filled with seasoned meat, pumpkin, or cabbage. The pastry blisters in the oil; the filling is juicy enough that you should bite carefully. Order a couple to start while you figure out the rest of the menu.
Then get the plov. It is not a side dish. It is the dish. The rice is stained golden from carrots and cumin, each grain separate, and the lamb underneath is falling apart. Finish with kebabs — they skew adventurous (veal foot soup, sweetbread kebabs, heart-and-tongue platters) and traditional in equal measure, so go with whatever feels right. The kitchen is kosher, and portions are generous.
Marakand — The Halal Heavy Hitter
98-98 Queens Boulevard, Rego Park, NY 11374
If Cheburechnaya is the venerable elder statesman, Marakand is the energetic younger cousin with a bigger dining room and Instagram-ready kebab platters. It’s halal, which widens the table for a lot of people, and the plov here is one of the most-praised in the neighborhood — slow-cooked lamb, caramelized carrots, fried raisins, and rice that has clearly spent time in proper company.
The kebab game is strong across the board: lamb, beef, chicken lolah, chicken tabaka. The staff is courteous, the atmosphere is warm without trying too hard, and prices stay within a reasonable, everyday range — this is a place where a family of four can actually afford to eat Uzbek food the way Uzbek families eat it. Signature plov is the must-order.
Tandoori Food & Bakery — The Samsa Temple
99-04 63rd Road, Rego Park, NY 11374
This is the one you walk past on the way to somewhere else, then realize you should have stopped. Tandoori Food & Bakery is small, unglamorous, and runs a massive stone oven that pumps out lepeshka bread and samsa all day. The samsa — baked, not fried, in the tandoor — is the move: a flaky, layered pastry stuffed with seasoned lamb and onion, pulled straight from the oven walls.
They also do a proper plov with tender beef, a range of lolah kebabs, and lamb ribs that are worth ordering if you’re sharing. Prices are genuinely cheap — this is a neighborhood operation, not a destination restaurant, which is exactly why it rules. Go hungry, order too much, take bread home for tomorrow.
Chaikhana Sem Sorok — The Bukharian Teahouse
63-52 Booth Street, Rego Park, NY 11374
A “chaikhana” is a Central Asian teahouse, and this one is a Glatt kosher, Vaad Harabonim of Queens (VHQ)-certified destination for Bukharian Jewish cuisine. It’s probably the most culturally specific restaurant on this list — the name “Sem Sorok” is a reference to an Odessa-born Jewish song, and the tile tanur oven at the heart of the kitchen was actually built in Samarkand and shipped to Rego Park.
That oven does the heavy lifting. Samsa come out stuffed with onion and your choice of lamb, pumpkin, or beef — each one with that characteristic blistered, cracked top that only real tandoor heat produces. Beyond samsa, the menu runs the Bukharian playbook: plov, kebabs, housemade soups, and tea service that lasts as long as you want it to.
Hours are Sunday through Thursday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday 7 a.m. until two hours before sunset, and closed Saturday for Shabbat — plan accordingly.
How to Order Like You’ve Been Here Before
A few ground rules for a first Rego Park Uzbek meal:
- Start with bread and salads. Lepeshka bread is non-negotiable. So is at least one cold salad — beet, carrot, eggplant, or all three if you’re feeding a group.
- Order one plov, minimum. Even if you’re splitting appetizers, someone at the table needs plov. It’s the whole point.
- Don’t skip chebureki or samsa. One hand-pie per person, minimum. You’ll fight over the last one.
- Go light on kebabs if you’re new. Two or three for a table of four is plenty — these are big, generously portioned skewers.
- Tea, not coffee. Finish with black tea, properly poured. It cuts the richness and extends the meal, which is the whole Central Asian dining philosophy.
Getting There
Rego Park is one of the easier Queens food neighborhoods to reach — the M and R trains stop at 63rd Drive-Rego Park, which puts you within a three-to-five-minute walk of every restaurant on this list. From Midtown, it’s about 25 minutes on the R. If you’re driving, there’s metered and side-street parking along 63rd Drive and Booth Street, though it tightens up on weekend evenings.
Bring an appetite, bring a friend who’ll split plov with you, and don’t bother making a plan for dessert — the bread and tea will handle it.
