Large parties come to eat at Cheburechnaya on a nightly bases. The customers are primarily Bukharian Jews. The waitresses are from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia. The main language of communication is Russian, but many of them speak the Bukharian dialect that has elements of Tajik, Farsi, Russian, Hebrew, and Uzbek.
Rabbi Israel Steinberg visits the restaurant every week to make sure that the preparation and cooking of the food follows Jewish Kosher law.
The influences in Bukharian food spans religion and geographic location. One can expect to find these type of items on the menu: Islamic kebabs, Chinese dumplings and Russian dough pastries, all spiced with key South Asian flavors.
One of the specialty dishes at the restaurant is the Chebureki - a dough pastry filled with spiced meat or vegetables and fried until crispy.
The production line for the Pelmeni, a boiled bite size dumpling with ground beef that is served in a spiced broth.
Nadia Sionov, the mother of the restaurant owner takes a phone call break while she sits in the kitchen and prepares food. Like many Jewish mothers, Bukharian Jewish mothers like to cook in mass quantity.
Staff meal remains half eaten while the waitresses run the front of the house to serve the many customers. The soup, Lagman, contains a hand-pulled dough noodle and various spices, to be accompanied with a piece of traditional circular bread and pilov, spiced rice.
When mother of the restaurant owner, Nadia Sionov is not preparing food in the back, she occupies a table on the floor to make sure everything is running smoothly.
Decorations at Cheburechnaya consist of Muslim style ceramics, Jewish religious items, Middle Eastern “evil-eye” talismans, and several large screen TVs that blast pop music from the region.
