Ethnic Food in Ankara: Urumci, An Uyghur Spirit In Dishes

​It has been a week since I posted my previous Chinese restaurant in Tunali. I was actually looking for a nice place in Ankara and got some recommendations from my friends. So, among those this Uygur restaurant was chosen for this week’s post !For foreigners especially who do not have any relations with Turkish or Chinese, it is quite difficult to recognize Uygur people. An Uygur community is currently one of minorities that is living in  Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Turkey and China , and according to statistic in 2000  its population has reached up to 8,399,393. Also, it is part of Turkish ethnic group that Chinese government acknowledged among other 56 minorities in China. They have their own language and majority of population is based on Islam. This would be enough for brief explanation for the Uygur.
​

​
​The first impression which I got from this restaurant was that it was very crowd and the waiters were super friendly to us. The funny thing was that since they have Asian appearance one of the waiters was almost exactly looking same with my friend in Korea who is in military service right now. (hahah !, my future to.. soooo pity)
When we just entered this place, there was no seat for us outside. Therefore, we took our seats and surfed into the menus. But, later on there was a chance to move our seat to outside. So what? We went out. Oh ! By the way, they firstly served us with a warm tea. ( Really enjoyed that tea )

As you can see from the menu, the price is set in affordable price. We ordered more than 6 meals, but it only costed 70 TL. This is a major merit that you could consider when you visit some places to have some foods. In terms of details of a menu, they only had Turkish and Uygur in written. This was a bit weakest point for this restaurant. However, since all the images were also in the menu so that we were able to decide our dishes. I hope more restaurants could have menus in English. This will attract more guests in long term ! Here are some foods that we ordered. Ummm.. Yammmy..

Overall, this Uygur restaurant satisfied us in many perspectives.

1. The location was next to a huge park named Kurtlus Park.  So, it was not that hard to visit them.
2. The Price was not that expensive.
3. They had enough space to serve many guests. This provides us some impression of comfort.
4. The tastes of the meals that we ate in this place were different from other Turkish restaurants. They had their own tastes and some of them had similar tastes to my home country which is South Korea. (But, the dumpling had too much spices in it.)

In one sentence, I enjoyed a lot and willing to visit again before I leave Turkey after my graduation on 17th of June. ( This is hint for next post.. ! )

Just like before, I hope you got useful info in my post and catch up with next one as well.

​See ya !!!

Urumci Uygur Restaurant
Address: Ön Cebeci Mahallesi, Ziya Gökalp Cad. No:76, 06590 Çankaya/Ankara
Phone: (0312) 433 52 04
Hours: 11:00 AM – 09:30 PM
​