SF’s only Uzbek restaurant is good for a meaty adventure

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Sometimes, it’s fun to recognize almost nothing on the menu.

This is how I felt at Sofiya, which claims to be the only restaurant in San Francisco serving the cuisine of Uzbekistan, the landlocked Central Asian nation that was formerly part of the Soviet Union. In its two-tiered dining room at the edge of Lower Nob Hill, festooned with polychromatic, traditional Uzbek dresses, I was confronted with unfamiliar items that turned out to be familiar comfort foods by another name, from pilaf to dumplings. 

Ordering on a whim only to have an a-ha moment is the best kind of dining. But should you be looking for guidance, the team at 4-month-old Sofiya is prepared to help. Joe Achmed considers his job to be half restaurant manager, half educator. “Uzbek food is not very common in San Francisco,” he said.

Sofiya is both halal and meat-forward, so while there is no pork, there are plenty of soft, fragrant lamb and beef kebabs, along with manti, steamed beef-and-onion dumplings that eat like Nepalese momos (four for $20).

There are some surprises. One is the bounty of fresh herbs and vegetables, from parsley to pomegranate seeds, adorning nearly everything. The Sofiya salad ($17) is a veritable heap of lettuces, onions, and citrus, and the tomatoes — unlike the typical pink softballs of winter — are remarkably flavorful. The Tashkent salad ($17) is a mix of julienned daikon radish, fried onions, hard-boiled eggs, and beef tongue — not to all tastes, to be sure, but wonderful all the same.

Plov, essentially beef pilaf ($22), is a classic and hearty rice dish. Sofiya’s arrives with carrots, chickpeas, and quail eggs, plus a house-made beef sausage known as qazy. It’s popular: As Achmed boasted, taking a page from a world almanac, “In Uzbekistan, we make around 5,000 tons of it per day.” 

Equally hyperbolic are the portion sizes. At Sofiya, the dishes can be almost inconveniently large. Order three items for two people, and odds are you’ll be hauling something home. Big though it is, a bowl of qurutob, the national dish ($22), is not only indicative of Uzbekistan’s culture but downright fun to share. Studded with tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions, it’s essentially a Middle Eastern salad served over labneh, the tangy yogurt-cheese hybrid. It practically begs for a $5 roll of obi non, a twisted, egg-washed bread studded with black and white sesame seeds, served so fresh it was too hot to rip apart.

Because it’s always advisable to balance a meat-heavy meal with some acid, Sofiya has the $15 pickle plate to end all pickle plates. A cornucopia of probiotic delights, it ranges from beets and black olives to red and green tomatoes to cucumber half-spears, plus a bonus helping of kimchi.

Sofiya, which is the successor to a prior Uzbek restaurant at the same address, Halal Dastarkhan, has cemented its status in just a few short months as a gathering place for people from all over Central Asia — a population of 15,000 to 20,000 in San Francisco alone, by Achmed’s count.

In a sense, Sofiya is a quintessential restaurant for its hood. Whether that be Yemeni cheese or Chinese-Venezuelan chicken, the Tenderloin and Lower Nob Hill have always been where restaurants spring up to cater to the city’s new arrivals.