You didn’t really visit a country if you haven’t tried its food.
Traditional Kyrgyz food is heavy on meat and dairy, probably strongly
influenced from their historically nomadic lifestyle. I went to a
banquet and asked what types of meat were on the table. The server
responded, "this is horse and another horse."
Kumis - fermented mare’s milk. It tastes fermented and fizzy. I recommended tasting just a little bit of it before ordering a full glass.
Tea - served at every home meal, usually green
Bread - its big, round, and puffy.
Boor Sok - they’re little pockets of fry bread. The only way I’ve seen this is in a heaping basket or spread all around the table.
Manti - this was probably my favorite. Steamed dumplings! They remind me of the Chinese xiaolongbao but less soupy.
Samsa - like a pasty. It's a pastry filled with meat and veggies.
Shashlik - meat on a stick. Who doesn’t like that? Unless you don’t eat meat
Plov - another one of my favorites! I have admit I really like Central Asian food because it’s really close to Chinese food. It’s an Uzbek mixed rice dish and each region has their own variety.
Laghman - Traditionally from the Dungan people, these noodles are best hand-pulled and thick. It sits in a little broth - not enough to drink but just enough to splash you. You can have it stir-fried
There’s also Besh Barmak which I didn’t get a chance to try. It’s a traditional nomad food of meat, usually horse or mutton, and onions served over noodles.
I'm here in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan for a work trip! Before leaving, Peter did all my cultural, historical, and general information research for me so it's only fair I write a little bit about it. And a food blog, of course.
Bishkek is a very livable city and doesn't really cater to tourists. But there are a few hostels popping up, more cafes with English speaking staff, and taxis that don't rip you off. My favorite part of walking around Bishkek's crumbling uneven sidewalks is seeing all the Soviet style buildings surrounded by trees and parks. There's not a lot of Soviet statues left - most of them have been replaced by Kyrgyz heros like Manas. The man's so popular there are people who dedicate their lives to memorizing and reciting his epic
While walking around Bishkek, you'll notice the stunning mountain views in the distance. Kyrgyzstan is 96% mountains.
I did get to take 2 trips outside of the city. One to Ala Archa National Park for a work excursion. Only 1 hour there but enough to make me want to come back.
And the other to the Bird of Prey Festival, hosted by Culture-Based Tourism Kyrgyztan, near Issyk-Kul. Issyk-Kul is the 2nd largest mountain lake at 1,607 meters and the 2nd largest saline lake in the world. We got to see some traditional Kyrgyz dances, sports, and songs.
We even got see the goat carcass polo game! It's called Buzkashi or Ulak Tartysh in Kyrgyz. It's described as goat polo but it's really not. It's much more aggressive and there's a 65lb goat involved. Can you spot the goat-carcass? Hint: there's no head. Oh, and my favorite part is the super traditional game ending when they throw the sacred carcass on a car that's passing by for good luck.
Kyrgyzstan boasts a proud nomadic tradition and that involves living in and building yurts. It takes approximately 1 month to make all the parts and 40 minutes to set it up. I didn't get to sleep in one but I did get to experience what it's like filled with 40 some people eating lunch. Oddly, not claustrophobic at all.
They even had a segment for tourists to try Kyrgyz games. One was a competition to drink a half bottle of vodka with your 5-person team. Somehow I don't think that was a real Kyrgyz game. But we did get to pretend to ride donkeys, wrestle on "horses", and play one-on-one tug of war.
Kava - do you like dirt? Or potato skins covered in dirt? Then this is the drink for you. It is supposed to have a calming effect but you have to drink about 3 coconut bowls of them.
Beer - Hawaii has a couple of big name beers, Kona and Big Island being two of the most famous. Gotta go to Hawaii for some their more interesting ones, like passion fruit.
Rum - Rum is distilled from sugar cane and sugar cane production was a driving force behind Hawaii's economy. Koloa makes a most delicious coffee rum.
Musubi- big spam sushi
Crackseed - it's the seed of a plum and mixed with a sweet and sour combination that is put on dried fruit and gummies. It's called crackseed because it's literally cracked seed and also it's addicting.
Poke - pronounced poh-keh. It's a raw fish salad. The simpler the better, in my opinion.
Plate lunch - if you read about what to eat in Hawaii, you'll most certainly come across the plate lunch. It's a meal on a plate but you have to have 2 scoop rice or you're doing it wrong. Below is chicken lau lau steamed in taro leaves. The taro leaves are good to eat too!
Japanese food - plenty of this around given Hawaii's history. And they do this really well given how many Japanese tourists visit per year. Beef ramen pictured below. I'm hungry now.
Fish - oh gosh. Can't get enough of this. It's eye-closing, soft murmur fresh. Seared ahi accompanied by mashed purple sweet potatoes. I would go back just for this.
*Not pictured because we were too concentrated on eating and forgot to take photographs are two Hawaiian cuisines, loco moco and poi. Loco moco is Hawaii's comfort food; hamburger patty atop a pile of white rice and topped off with a fried egg and gravy is the traditional way. There are other variations but why mess with a good thing? Poi is made by mashing the stem of the taro plant and it becomes a gooey consistency. When poi is served, all conflict among the people at the meal must be halted.
Hawaii the state also has an island named Hawaii- this gets confusing faster than "Who's on first?", so Hawaii the island is usually called "Big Island." King Kamehameha the Great was originally chief of just Hawaii/Big Island, so as he expanded his Kingdom of Hawaii by conquest/peaceful submission the name Hawaii came to be used for all the islands as well. So, had a chief from another island united all 8 instead, we could be talking about the state of Oahu instead. I wonder how many articles on Big Island start with this lede vs. my next point:
Why is Big Island the biggest island? For the same reason it's such a cool place to visit: volcanism. Hawaii is a chain of volcanoes, with the oldest to the west and the youngest and most active to the east. The tectonic plate Hawaii sits on is moving slowly west over a huge hotspot: a mantle upwelling which creates volcanoes above it. Big Island is currently over the hotspot and has several active volcanoes, so the island is still growing and there are old lava flows visible everywhere. Once it moves off the hotspot erosion will catch up and Big Island will start shrinking, but there will be a new island to the east! I'm starting to get carried away with explaining context instead of telling you all the cool things we did so TL:DR Big Island has tons of cool volcano stuff and important Hawaiian cultural sites.
Our friends Jim and Josh from Honolulu flew over for the weekend and gave us a whirlwind insider tour. I'm listing out everything we did and it's huge, so strap yourself in for a long post. It's so much that I had to group it by category. How did we do all this in 5 days?!
VOLCANOES
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park has some crazy stuff. Kilauea is the most active volcano, and there's an observatory overlooking the enormous caldera. It's been erupting continuously (but not explosively) since 1983. The lava mostly travels underground through lava tubes (pic below from an old Mauna Loa lava tube we explored) and emerges near the coast. We rented bikes and went a few miles down Chain of Craters road, the former coastal road now covered in lava, to check out where the lava meets the ocean. The town of Kalapana used to be here, but it was covered by lava flows in 1986. A few people have moved back and set up temporary houses on top of the lava on their original lots. We went at dusk and did some sunset/night hiking on the lava flows, so I got to live out my fantasy of trekking through Mordor to destroy the ring. It's the most stunning landscape, and all the warning signs really help sell the feeling that man vs. nature is no contest at all.
The volcanism means that there are some crazy geological sights. We went to South Point, the southernmost place in the US, and hiked to nearby Papakolea green sand beach. A silicate deposit next to the beach is rich in olivine (gemstone quality is called peridot), so the beach is a dark, sparkling green color.
Besides green sand and your regular white sand, there are also plenty of black sand beaches. We did a short hike to the Pololu valley black sand beach: we took a picnic lunch but had to hide in a driftwood shelter to escape the rain.
HISTORY
It's not all beaches though: most of the coast is jagged black volcanic rock, like it is at The End of the World. That's really a place we went to: The End of the World is a battlefield where the fate of the Hawaiian religion was decided. When King Liholiho broke the kapu system in 1819, his cousin Chief Kekuaokalani led a group of rebels still true to the Hawaiian religion and challenged Liholiho to a battle here. The rebels lost and Kekuaokalani was killed. The lava rocks are so sharp it's hard to imagine how anyone could effectively fight here.
Big Island's coast is strung with heiaus, the lava rock foundations of sacred Hawaiian temples, but the highlight is Pu'uhonua O Honaunau National Historical Park. Under the kapu system, Pu'uhonua was a refuge. Anyone who violated kapu faced a death sentence, but if they could make their way to a designated refuge before capture (not an easy task) they would be forgiven and absolved by priests. Pu'uhonua has a reconstructed heiau, and was also a sacred royal hangout.
Statue of King Kamehameha in Kapaau, near his birthplace. This is the original statue commissioned by Honolulu: it was cast in Europe in 1880 but lost at sea en route. Honolulu used the insurance money to order a recast, so when the original was salvaged in 1912 it made it's way here near Kamehameha's birthplace.
Big Island has plenty of early 20th century history as well. Big Island is famous for Kona coffee, and the Kona Coffee Living History Farm tells the story of the immigrants who came here to work the farms (seriously, go see it if you come to Big Island). The Uchida family moved here from Japan and lived and worked their small holding here from the 1920s through the 1980s. The house has their belongings from the 1940s, and reenactors work the land and live just as the Uchidas did, and will happily show you every side of coffee farming and domestic life. The Living History Farm is at the end of the Mamalahoa Kona Heritage Corridor, an old road with historic early-20th century general stores and art galleries.
We also saw historic Hilo on Big Island's east coast, wrecked twice by tsunamis in 1946 and 1960, and the monument listing the height of the tsunami swells.
WATER
Hawaii has excellent snorkeling, so we borrowed some gear from our Airbnb and jumped in the water at Two Step. The water is crystal clear and it's easy to see the tropical fish swarming the coral reef just below.
Jim and Josh also took us to Akaka falls and the local way to Pe'epe'e falls for a rock scramble and some waterfall swimming.
EVERYTHING ELSE
I'm a big astronomy fan, so I freaked out at the chance to see the famous observatories at Mauna Kea. Measured from the undersea base to the summit (10,000 m), the (dormant) volcano Mauna Kea is the largest mountain on Earth! The summit is 4,207 m, which is plenty high to feel the effects of altitude, and it's so arid and high that it's a perfect spot for astronomy. There's hardly any light pollution (Big Island's street lights are even the same shade of yellow to make it easier to filter out), and there's plenty of nearby infrastructure to support a large footprint of international researchers. Thirteen telescopes grace the summit, and are responsible for famous discoveries like the speed of cosmic expansion, exoplanets, the size of the Sagittarius A black hole at the center of our galaxy, protoplanetary disks, and the age of the earliest observable galaxies.
A few more places we went/things we saw:
Big Island has the most space and the most affordable land, so there's a thriving culture of transplants, including the hippy scene at Pahoa. The kombucha bar's kombucha was great, but we passed on the kava (it just tastes like dirt to me).
Big Island Brewhaus and Kona Brewing Company are both on Big Island, and their brewpubs are top notch. They experiment with tropical fruits and coffee in many of their brews, and I'm hoping to find some of their down-catalog products distributed here in DC.
Big Island is the home of the Ironman triathalon. There was a qualifier while we were there, so we saw super fit athletes training and hanging out everywhere.
We also went to Waimea, HQ of the Parker Ranch, formerly the largest ranch in the US. We drove there under a vivid double rainbow, and the clouds broke just long enough for us to see the observatories on Mauna Kea both above the clouds and under the rainbow!
We saw an incredible amount of sights, but it's easy to have a great time on Big Island just driving around. The roads are beautiful and the landscape stunning.
Big Island's transplants also include invasive Puerto Rican Coqui frogs: they chirp every night in a loud song that is somehow both piercing and mesmerizing:
That's it from me but look out for Priscilla's post on Hawaiian food!
-Peter
PS- I have a theory that Big Island shares major themes with the world of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" trilogy
