Kafe Bobur — Restaurant in Samarkand City

Absolutely terrible dining experience however the food cannot be faulted and is very tasty. If you decide to dine here, make sure you get exactly what you ordered and do not put up with the English speaking male worker's horrible behaviour.

Story time below for those willing to read:

I sat down and ordered a tomato salad and Shorpa with a mutton, beef, and Napoleon shashlik pointing exactly at what I wanted. The English speaking worker was strangely insistent on me trying the Lula Kabob soup to which I politely declined and said I wanted the Shorpa. He said the Napoleon was finished and so I pointed at the chicken fillet shashlik and said I would like that. He suggested bread - to which I agreed - and then repeated back to me what I had ordered.

1 - He brings the bread out with his full thumb firmly grasping the bread. I'm no germaphobe, I'll just eat around his thumbprint left in my bread. No problem.

2 - He brings out Lula Kabob soup, I'm mildly annoyed at this point but I don't bring it up since in my mind I had settled on coming back the next day to try the Lula Kabob soup, now I'll just get the Shorpa tomorrow instead.

3 - When he brings out the three skewers, he basically frisbees them onto the table and before I can open my mouth he's off like a banshee back inside the restaurant. He has given me chicken drumsticks instead of chicken fillets.

I go back inside and tell him he gave me drumsticks instead of fillets and he replies that the fillets are finished. I explain that he also gave me the wrong soup to which he replies that the Shorpa was also finished. No wonder he frisbee'd my food onto my table and left before I could say anything. I explain at length that this is not proper service, if the food I ordered is out of stock then you need to come tell me, not just give me another dish that I never ordered. I tell him that I do not want the drumsticks and he takes it off the table. He keeps saying the items are out of stock and I say 'so you should tell me'.

The shrewd reader may also note that the tomato salad never arrived - if they ran out of this I do not know and it remains an unsolved mystery. I now go inside to settle the bill and I repeat to him that if the items ordered are not in stock then you should tell the customer. He strangely suggests that if I came back at 10:00am tomorrow then everything would be in stock. He adds up the total bill and had the sense to not include the 15% service charge (which I would have refused to pay any %). He states that maybe it was a language problem - which is funny as he had no problem telling me the Napoleon shashlik was finished - however it is simply a behavioural problem on his account. Never, in all the countries that I have visited, all the restaurants that I have sat down at, has a waiter/waitress behaved in his manner. Additionally, at no point did he apologise, a simple 'sorry' was never heard by my ears.

From his behaviour in throwing the dishes down, without giving me a chance to remark, I would think that he knew what he was doing was wrong and banking on 'just another tourist' not speaking up. So I repeat, the food is great, but do not let the workers take you for a ride and make sure you get exactly what you ordered. Also, one should read the other reviews which give similar instances of...

Warning!!!! CHEATING and OVERCHARGING. I have the worst experience in my whole 11 days Uzbekistan trip. The waiters and chefs are not honest at all, they do understand English well and know what we ordered. But they delivered a big 'iron plate' which we only ordered 1 lamb and 1 chicken, also we mentioned we don't need salad. They removed the iron sticks, so we can not tell how many kebab sticks be included. In the end, we have to pay double price to cover the food we didn't order. Waiters insist we ordered 2 lambs and 2 chicken which it is NOT true. They are really bad people that we had ever met in Uzbekistan. Warning to all the tourists, this store hires cheating waiters/ chefs and food is really salty and not tasty at all. Highly NOT recommend to visit. if there is ZERO star for review, I definitely will leave...

We asked one of the bazaar cart guys where he'd recommend for shashlik and he immediately told us about this place, his recommendation was really good - trust the locals!

English spoken, really atmospheric place where you choose the kebabs you want from the fridges at the front (mixed and beef we had) then they cook them for you just behind the counter. You can choose various salad plates, and the bread was fantastic, the best of a very good lot we had in Uzbekistan; they put it on top of the meat whilst it's cooking for a few seconds to absorb some flavour!

The whole meal was less than £5 each, was superb all round, so gets a really big thumbs up from me. There's probably cheaper, but this ticked all the boxes I...