SULTAN — Restaurant in Khiva

Don't bother coming here if you are not part of an organized tour group (large or small). In addition to that, this place has a total lack of efficiency.

We walked in around 7:30 PM. Ground floor: empty, 1st floor: empty, roof top: about 2/3rds full. We got a menu without prices. The waitress did have prices on her phone. There seemed to be only one physical menu in the whole restaurant. We received our drinks quickly, but at 9:00 PM we still hadn't received any food. A group of 3 + tour guide that walked in after us (they also ordered a la carte), basically was finishing their food by that time. I walked down to the first floor, and at this point there were two 10+ groups sitting there, all already having been served.

In terms of efficiency, when food DID arrive to the roof top, waitresses had to walk down more than once to check whose order it was, and even then they managed to screw up orders as we could hear and see from other tables. Waitresses are very nice, but this place needs proper guidance.

So, go for the views from the rooftop, get a pot of tea, but don't expect to walk out with a full stomach. We got up and left after 1.5...

We recently visited Sultan Restaurant, and it’s a visually appealing spot with two floors and a rooftop. Unfortunately, it was too chilly to venture up top, but we’ll be back to check it out and grab a photo.

Our order consisted of pumpkin soup, borscht, achichuk, plov, pumpkin manti, fanta, and melon juice. However, the achichuk and manti seemed to have missed the memo, as they never arrived. Our waitress, Azize, was delightful but clearly overwhelmed, leading to a few mix-ups. Thankfully, we only paid for the dishes that made it to the table.

The soups were excellent, warming us up and setting our expectations high, but the plov didn’t quite deliver. I’ve had much better in Tashkent and Brooklyn. Plus, the melon juice, while delicious, ended up costing more than the plov, which was a bit surprising.

The food took a while to come out, but the live entertainment helped pass the time and kept the atmosphere lively. Overall, Sultan has great potential, but some tweaks to the service and a bit of a plov upgrade would...

While the view is spectacular the service was horrible. The whole restaurant was “dish roulette” where they continually dropped a dish at the one wrong table after another, until they got it right. Afterward, we got into an argument with the manager about a “pumpkin” dumpling, that was full of egg. First, he refused to take the dish away and threw it back on the table saying there wasn’t any egg. Second, he brought an ice cold egg dumpling to prove his point that the pumpkin was “different” than egg and forced us to eat it. We were just trying to pay and leave, but when we were paying, he called the chef over to ask what was in the dumpling, where we were told the dumpling was “50% pumpkin and 50% egg”. The manager was hell bent on proving his point even though the server/menu didn’t say it was an egg dumpling....