Besh Qozon is not a fine-dining restaurant, and including it on a luxury dining list is a choice the editorial team stands by. This is the only place in the world where two-ton iron kazans cook the city's official Tashkentsky plov in public view every morning, and it is the single most important dish in the Uzbek culinary canon. Skipping Besh Qozon on a Tashkent visit is like skipping St. Peter's in Rome because it's touristy — the crowd is the point.
The operation is industrial in the best sense. Five kazans (the name 'Besh Qozon' means 'five cauldrons') are lit at 6am. Each is loaded in a precise sequence: mutton fat rendered first; yellow onion, then lamb, then the yellow and red carrots cut into the prescribed matchsticks, then the rice layer (devzira, imported from Samarkand), then the water, then the chickpeas, then the raisins, then the buried lid of whole garlic heads. Service starts at 11am. By 1pm the first kazan is empty and the cooks are already stoking tomorrow's fire; by 2.30pm on a weekend the whole operation has sold out.
The plov is served on shared metal plates, topped with the wedding-style additions (sliced sausage, quail egg, strips of horsemeat sausage). Bread comes from the attached tandir; a salad of sliced tomato-and-cucumber arrives automatically; green tea in small bowls is refilled by the table staff without being asked. A single generous portion costs less than a cappuccino in London. Adding the shashlik (skewered lamb ribs from the adjacent grill) makes it a complete meal for under $15.
The social register is what makes Besh Qozon an experience rather than a transaction. The dining hall seats 300 people at communal tables, and a weekend lunch is shared with wedding parties, business lunches, ministers and taxi drivers, visiting French food critics and local families with four generations represented. The right move for a visiting group of six to ten is to arrive at 11am, photograph the kazans being uncovered, eat standing briefly at the plov counter, then take a table for the full spread. There is no other experience in Uzbekistan that delivers the country's food culture this completely in ninety minutes.
Best for Team Dinner
Besh Qozon is Tashkent's most important team-dinner (or team-lunch) experience — the shared plate of plov at the communal table is the fastest way to turn a multi-national group into a shared memory. For solo dining it is equally good: the plov counter doubles as a single-diner perch with a view of the kazans, and tea is refilled automatically. For a first date it is the confident, unshowy choice — the partner who picks Besh Qozon over a hotel restaurant is already telling you something useful.