Tangritah Uyghur

Despite been to this restaurant so many times and calling it one of my favourite restaurants in Adelaide i still don’t even know how to actually pronounce the name of this place. I never even attempted to as i just simply call it «the Uyghur (pronounced wee-​ga) restaurant» .
It’s a real hidden gem still and is a very unassuming place. Many people would have simply walked past and never even noticed it despite it being on Grote Street and not exactly tucked away in a corner or anything. It’s most likely because of the modest look of the place and it’s definitely not the ritz at all.
Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Malaysian, but have you tried Ughur food? I bet if you asked around if people have ever tried Uyghur food I bet you will be met with a look of confusion as it’s still a relatively unknown cuisine. According to Wikipedia Ughur people are «are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia».
Essentially Ughur cuisine is a fusion between Chinese and Turkish cooking. I’ve never left this place disappointed but rather always leaving with a big smile on my face and nursing a food baby. This place is great for bigger groups of friends of say around 5 – 8 in which you can easily all share multiple large portions of food and split the bill making it relatively cheap dinner.
I go here regularly with a friend who is also as equally as obsessed with this restaurant and we are able to have a four course dinner with Arizono tea on the side for around $ 30 per person. What a bargain!
I recommend on trying the lamb kebabs as they are to die for! They may not be very healthy with the amount of fat but they are succulent and the spice combination on these lamb kebabs will put a huge smile on your face after just your very first bite. The stir fry chicken dish is also very, very, very good which comprises of the quality hand made noodles and whole chilies. However, if you are not gamed enough to try the spicier dishes the lamb pie and dumplings in soup are equally as delicious.
I have yet to try out their other dishes but I always stick to these because they are just too good not to keep trying again and again and again.
The service isn’t the best but it is efficient and just what you need. The food is so good you will completely forget the lack of smiles and enthusiasm coming from their staff.
I definitely recommend it to anyone who is willing to try something different and who love a real punch of flavours and spice in their food because this place surely delivers on taste.

Unexpected and delightful. I’d not tried Uighur food before, and given the region’s proximity to Mongolia — where I ate some of the worst meals of my life — I wasn’t sure what to expect. As previous diners have mentioned, the portions are enormous, and the food is aggressively spiced and deeply savory. I had a cucumber salad (crunchy and garlicky) and a dish involving bread, lamb and onions coated with chili and stir-​fried, as well as a refreshing glass of ayran, a Turkish drink made from water and yogurt.
It took quite a while for the food to come, but the service was deeply pleasant and thoughtful. The young woman waiting tables noticed I was injecting insulin — I’m a type 1 diabetic — and warned me away from the ayran, which has sugar added to it. I thanked her and wondered if it could be made without sugar, and she had the kitchen make me one. When my food took some time to arrive, she offered me bread or rice if I was in danger of having an insulin reaction from taking the shot and waiting to eat. That level of thoughfulness from a server managing a full dining room by herself was quite impressive.
Next time I’m in Adelaide, I’ll bring a mob with me to try several more dishes — the folks having the most fun were those who came in packs and filled the eight seat tables, trading kebab and dumpling dishes back and forth.
Adelaide residents, I’m jealous of you — this is a remarkable little restaurant and I wish my city had a joint half this good.

I strolled in here on a day where I would have thought it was closed. Nobody was inside during lunchtime. An old man was cooking in the back and woman waited on my friend and I. The door screeches as you enter and you’re presented with a menu of a great array of Uyghur food. Don’t expect the chinese regular entrees here; what you get is an amazing set of dishes that could only be found on the silk road. Cho’chura (Uyghur Style Dumplings with Soup) was perhaps the most delicious thing I ate in my two week trip to Oz. The Chayze Qormisi was a perfectly stir-​fried eggplant with tomato and capsicum. And the lamb kabobs were spectacular… almost as good as you find them in China. It’s rare that I might pass through Adelaide again, but if I do, I’ll come back here (likely a few times).

After being amazed by the Uyghur restaurant on Port Rd, Silk Road, I was keen to try this one out.
Uyghur cuisine is so unique and interesting that it sort of pays to go just for the experience. However, when I came here I experienced a lot of things good and bad…
Firstly, I don’t know what they were cooking out the back but all the air in the shop seemed to be carrying molecules of chilli and spice, so we kept sneezing and grabbing tissues and trying not to sneeze on each others’ food — it wasn’t a pretty sight. My nose kept itching, my eyes were watery, and all I wanted to do was take a shower because I was sweating like I just ate the sun. So that was uncomfortable.
The food, however, was not too bad. The lamb kebabs were especially nice, and I just love eating from huge metal sticks, it makes you feel hardcore.
I loved the décor. It was so wrong and so right in so many ways. Slightly grungy but all the more authentic — green walls, ornaments, brightly coloured furniture. It was truly endearing.
Located on Grote St just past the bus station (if you’re coming from Victoria Square), give this place a go. You might be surprised.

Eating here, probably the most annoying thing was the door that would screech the floor every time someone came in. I thought I was going to jump out of my skull every time it happened but eventually I managed to filter the noise out and focus on eating the good food in front of me.
Definitely something unique in Adelaide, it’s one of the few Uyghur restaurants around and I’m surprised that I didn’t know about it sooner. Being off the main street in Chinatown, I guess I never thought there was a place just on the other side of the road that served traditional food from what isn’t exactly the most commonly known group of people in the world.
Japanese, Korean, Chinese… Uyghur? Nope, definitely different. Eating there for the first time, my biggest mistake was underestimating the size of the dishes there. The food was delicious, very filling and we ended up taking away much of it so that we could eat it for dinner the next day.
There was only one girl who seemed to be serving that day, but despite that she was doing a good job though it was a full house. The shop isn’t huge and the atmosphere of the place reminds me of the traditional mamak stores I used to frequent back home.
A must try if you haven’t yet and don’t be shy to go into the store because the name is unfamiliar. Be adventurous and try something new, you definitely won’t regret it.

Tangritah Uyghur serves the food of the Uyghur (pronounced wee-​ga) people — an ethnic Chinese Muslim group whose food is a cross between Chinese and Turkish food. After having several friends recommend Tangritah Uyghur to me, I dragged a bunch of friends here for dinner recently. Maybe I ordered badly, or it is better as winter food, but I was a bit let down. Nothing was terrible, but I didn’t *love* anything.
The place itself was quite sweet — walls painted mint green with little instruments hung from the walls, plastic table cloths and purple plastic chairs. The staff were very friendly, and it was amusing to see the old bearded chef walking out wielding a handfull of huge metal sticks with spicy kebabs on them every so often. There was a bunch of softdrinks in the fridge, and I got a fizzy purple drink, although next time I wouldn’t mind trying a jug of the Uyghur milk drink.
We ordered a chicken noodle dish, kebabs, lamb pie, and an eggplant dish. The spices on the lamb and the kebabs were delicious — warm without being fiery. But the meat itself was quite fatty. The chicken noodle dish and the eggplant dish were nice but a little on the oily side for me.
Given that it is very cheap and I have had so many recommendations for this place, I would give it another try. Especially if someone else ordered for me!