dresese

Cheburechnaya

Forest Hills evidently has a large number of Jewish immigrants from Uzbekistan, since there are at least three Uzbek restaurants, and at least one or two Uzbek grocery stores here. I've only eaten at one of the restaurants, Beautiful Bhukura on 108th St. Since then, I've heard of a few more, one of which is Cheburechnaya.

Recently, the Village Voice gave Cheburechnaya an award for "Most Audacious Kebab", which is a lamb fat kebab made from the lamb fat from the tail of the lamb. Supposedly, that's where the best lamb fat comes from. This jives with what my friend Farhang told me about the lambs in Iran, which have huge fat tails, and are prized for the wonderful fat.

Today I went to try it, and it really was great. The place is Kosher, and I noticed that many of the patrons were Sephardic Jews. I had a lamb fat kebab, a lamb rib kebab, a tomato kebab, and an onion kebab. Also, I had the chebureki, which were a large delicate packet filled with one of a few things; I had mushrooms. The packet itself almost reminded me of the Indian chaat dish with a fried bread and garbanzo beans (I can't remember the name of it). The chebureki was sort of refined and greasy at the same time. As you can imagine, it was delicious.

The lamb fat kebab really was awesome. It truly was nothing but lamb fat - no actual meat on it. But the fat was soft, salty, and tasty. Even if eating a whole blob of grilled lamb fat seems objectionable, one taste and you'll be craving it. Everything else was very good.

The only problem here was the service, which was poor. The server never came by, forgot to bring me bread, and never gave me any water! It doesn't matter too much to me, though. The food is the important part.