It’s a weekend afternoon in the packed Tashkent Supermarket in Forest Hills, Queens and amid the din three teenage cashiers speak wistfully about hometowns in Uzbekistan. They also tell us of the need to speak Uzbek, Tajik, Russian, and English to help customers navigate the cavern of delights on offer. In case the polyglot teens working here don’t make clear the diversity on offer, television screens hanging above the aisles do, flashing photos of specials including samsa, Central Asian savory pastries, and branzino filets – a favorite of several Mediterranean cuisines. An express lane exists “only for shawarma and plov.”
With its vast international selection, Tashkent Supermarket breaks free from the “ethnic” food sections featured in standard grocery stores. While certainly Uzbek at its core, the business is broader in scope both gastronomically and geographically, boasting five locations across Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan.
Abdul, a young employee from Bukhara, a prominent stop along the Silk Road in present day Uzbekistan, offers to show us around the store. “People come for everything. Some want [soft drinks], some want qurt,” or pocket-sized cheese balls prepared for Central Asian herders, he said, as we try to get out of the way of a customer galloping past, eager to hurry through the express lane to crack into her fluffy plov.
“Everyone likes plov,” Abdul says with a toothy grin. A type of rice pilaf, Uzbeks regard it as their national dish, and the permutations across the region are endless. In the back corner, chefs scoop matchstick-sized carrots over rice out of kazans, an extremely versatile type of cast iron cauldron. You can order an optional side of qazi, a smoky sausage that traditionally is made from horse, but which Tashkent prepares with beef.
The tiny Forest Hills location manages to fit just about all the food one can imagine. There is an entire wall of Central Asian bread, a dietary staple, baked in house each day; the selection ranges from the hard-bottomed Bukhara bread to the stockier Samarkand variety. Other loaves in stock included Lithuanian black rye and paper-thin lavash.
Most customers hover around the hot and cold bars that offer a freshly made mashup of the Silk Road, the former Soviet Union, and beyond. Customers load up on self-serve portions from the retro Americana Neptune seafood salad, lined up next to a mutton-and-mayonnaise Tashkent salad, Uyghur hand-pulled noodles, and an imaginative sushi salad, a type of seven-layer dip for the senses. There is a vinegary khe fish salad, brought in part from Koreans who came to Central Asia due to Stalin-era deportations. Customers can choose from bite sized pelmeni dumplings or potato, egg and cabbage pirozhkis, next to glittering trays of golden samsa pastries.
The supermarket also sources their own halal meat, offering quail, cow feet, and everything in between. For those looking to stock up on staples, there is Lebanese labneh, Amish sour cream, and Mexican yogurts. Others may be coming for seafood specialties, including Russian caviar, which sits in a lockbox next to a impressive array of Jewish smoked fish. There are rows and rows of drinks, from Armenian compote to ever-so-salty Georgian mineral waters.
For some, this may serve as an intriguing opportunity to try something new; for others, these products offer a taste of their far away homes. But, unlike is the case in typical American supermarkets, there is no food segregation on display here. Russian confectionaries, like the popular milk chocolate Alionka, sit next to Kit Kats near the register for customers to reward their children after making it through the organized chaos. And, while Queens is no stranger to regional food suppliers, the breadth on display is indicative of Tashkent’s bold stance to reimagine how everything, and everyone, can fit together.
As one customer told us, “If I could live inside the store, I would.”
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