It’s 2021. COVID is raging everywhere. Silk Road Express, a small booth in the food court of Super 88, sits forlorn and unvisited, as a few masked people stroll by every once in a while. Tough time to be a restaurant, I guess. The staff barely survives by handling delivery orders.
Then, Ali arrives.
He’s not like those other people, stopping by to gawk and then decide it would be unsanitary to eat here during a pandemic. No, he’s here to make a deal. To turn this stall into the greatest, best, five-Michelin-star restaurant in Boston.
Step 1: Rename it to Ali’s Uyghur Kitchen, but call it “Muqum Uyghur Kitchen” on the receipts just to troll people.
Step 2: Duplicate a bunch of items on the menu to make it look fancier and bigger. Bigger number, better restaurant, obviously.
Step 3: Hope that some enthusiastic idiot discovers this restaurant and mindlessly shills it on their blog.
Finishing the menu challenge
That story above is fiction. Isaac made it up, actually.
Other than step 2. Today I successfully tried every item on the Ali’s menu, and yep there’s some weird stuff going on with it. Since I didn’t want to splurge even more money and time on the remainder of the Ali’s menu (mostly items on the menu screen two), I recruited some friends to each buy one item I was still missing, and then we just had a free-for-all of trying all the different stuff. One visit, seven items down.
Review, part 3
Beef
This is fried beef with rice. This is beef with rice. This is stir fried beef. Wait what, which one is it? We ordered all three of those items, and yet we got three identical beef dishes back. Oh well. And the carrots on top taste an awful lot like the previously reviewed carrot salad. The beef is pretty good though.
Chicken
Turns out big plate chicken and big plate chicken with rice are the same exact thing, except one has rice. Wow, who could’ve guessed. It’s also pretty good, especially the potatoes.
Pilaf
And lastly, the pilaf was great, especially the chunks of lamb, although once again the carrots were literally just the carrot salad on top. I still prefer white rice over pilaf though. And similarly, although I didn’t include a photo here, the stir fried tomato with egg is just the same as the tomato with egg rice except without rice.
Conclusion
I think I’ve had enough Ali’s for the time being. Sure, it’s the best restaurant in all of Boston, but I think I need a temporary break from it for a few weeks.
Anyways, if you ever pay Ali’s a visit, here are my recommendations, although it’s pretty hard for me to pick since I have so many favorites. The goyro laghman, definitely. A lamp kebab for more energy. A somsa. Diced noodles. Cucumber salad. Shrimp with rice. Oh, and the yogurt, which I honestly think is really good, except that I haven’t had enough time to warm up to its greatness yet. The carrot salad is inexcusable though. And ignore the today’s special. I don’t know if Ali ever changes it.
