Caravan Uzbek Cuisine — Restaurant in Citrus Heights

3.5 stars for the food and an extra 0.5 stars for the ambiance and interior. There is a lot of parking outside. They have a cool looking almost 3D mural of a decorated hallway that makes you feel you could walk through it. The whole place is decorated with folky art, plates, statues, etc. There is a whole wall of the dessert scene with camels. The light fixtures are super interesting. Service was fine but I think the server could have given us more details of what the food is, since we don't know much about the cuisine.

We ordered the manti and lamb kazan kebab with a side of bread. The manti is basically dumplings or momos. It would have been much more educational if the menu said that. The minced meat inside was good but we would have liked more seasoning. We were told it comes with a yogurt sauce. It isn't a sauce, just yogurt that has been beaten up to make it smoother. We would have liked a little effort for this "sauce" - maybe add some salt and pepper, some paprika?

The lamb kezan kabab comes with potatoes and a salad with a tart vinaigrette. The lamb was delicious and properly cooked. It was easy to take it off the bone and the fat from it added a lot of flavor. However, it was plain. It would be nice to have some spices added to the lamb when it is being cooked. Some of the potato was still a little raw. The potatoes needed seasoning. The salad was fine. Since the kebab doesn't come with bread, we ordered bread and got store bought bread pieces. We expected something like a naan, which this was not. I don't know what one order of bread looks like. We had two orders and we got 3 pieces.

All in all, our food was decent, but they should work on seasoning and adding spices for flavor. The portions are small for the...

An utter delight. I had no idea what to expect, maybe something similar to Afghan food, which I've had a few times and wasn't crazy about. But my partner and I loved it.

We had lepeshka (bread), a beef samsa, the dumpling soup, and the yogurt-potato-dill-etc soup/dish, with a honey cake for dessert. (I don't remember all the Uzbek names.) For a drink, the cherry compote.

The flavors brought me up short, demanding to be paid attention to, eaten mindfully. They defied familiar categorization. The sauce that came with the samsa was not quite a chutney, or a tomato sauce, or a salsa. It was its own unique thing. The dumplings my partner described as halfway between a wonton and a tortellini, which makes sense geographically, but the beef was flavored so uniquely, I had to savor each bite. Somehow it managed to be both strange and comforting at the same time, like my grandmother made it, but not my grandmother. Some Uzbek grandmother I didn't know I had 😃.

I haven't had food this interesting and new to my palette while also being scrumptious since I-don't-know-when. Maybe when I had Thai food for the first time as a teenager. Even the dessert and drink I could write whole paragraphs about (though I won't, just - try them).

The atmosphere also felt surprisingly upscale for a little corner restaurant in a mini-strip mall type of lot. The menus were beautiful and clearly elaborated on the ingredients of all the unfamiliarly-named dishes. Music at just the right volume provided a cultural ambiance.

My only regret about not finding anything to be less than delighted about is that I'll miss out on getting one of the fantastically sassy burns the owners apparently leave for anyone who writes a negative review. They...

TO THE PERSON REPLYING TO REVIEWS: you are very rude. This was our first time trying ur restaurant because it looked good on social media. I dont usually leave bad reviews if u check my page. But your inability to take feedback from customers is shocking. I tried other places that are more expensive than urs and their food tastes great which is valued for the price. If you decide to have expensive prices, then ur food should reflect the price. U guys spent way too much time making the restaurant look good that u forgot to actually focus on ur food quality to meet the expectations of the price tag u guys have. I had a business before and I valued customer feedback to make my place better. It’s a shame u don’t, because people can change their reviews, which I will not be doing from ur rude response. Please take some time off and reflect on yourself and figure out why you hate people so much, and maybe a restaurant business isn’t something u should continue in. Have a wonderful day.

ORIGINAL REVIEW: Very underwhelming. We got it to go. We spent $118 dollars 1 Side of rice is $6, I barely got a cup of rice. Rice is cheap people, so unpleasant.

Each meal was supposed to come with a side of onions, for 4 meal meals, we got 1 side of onions. Wow.

Menu is VERY under described. $21 for Lula kebab WITHOUT RICE OR potatoes, $23 for Lula kebab with potatoes.

You can’t even call it a meal when u have to buy meat for $21, side of rice for $6 and barely any onions. And no salad, u want salad? Ur paying extra for it.

Meat is ok. But definitely not worth the money.

Will not come back. This is way too overpriced.

A family of 4- 2 kids and 2 adults, spent $118 for a meal that is not...