Kashkar Cafe

Named for Kashgar, the old Silk Road city of the Uyghurs, Kashkar has cooked halal Uyghur and Uzbek food at the quiet eastern end of Brighton Beach Avenue since 2003. Uyghur cooking is a cuisine of hand-pulled noodles, cumin and lamb, and the bosu lagman — noodles stretched to order and stir-fried with lamb and vegetables — is the dish to judge it by.

Around it, order samsa baked against the tandoor wall, khushang (fried manty the size of a baseball), juvova dumplings by the dozen, a lamb-rib skewer, and polov heavy with carrots. The decor is plastic tablecloths and a picture menu; the food is among the most serious in the neighborhood. It is busiest on New Year's Day, when the polar plunge crowd comes in to thaw.