Shooting this spot again was a real throwback to years ago when I shot them shortly after they opened for a certain corpo whose name sounds like Ozone, but is anything but amazin’, when they tried to enter the already piss-poor delivery app stable and failed faster than their prime delivery speeds. Eerkin’s, however, survived and expanded from that time all the way to Rockville, MD, replacing the comically awfully-run Amici Miei that I covered here some time ago – and this fact thoroughly pleases me! Whoever would prefer a shoddy excuse for overpriced Italian food over a rare, Northwestern Chinese flavor that proudly stands apart from lots of other cuisines and mixes various Chinese, Uzbek and Kazakh, and even Indian dishes into wonderful combinations. DMV are has but a handful of Uyghur spots with Kiroran Restaurant being another one I covered before, and saw completely different set of dishes there. Another quick note on particularly Uzbek cuisine – Rus-Uz is a solid spot in Alexandria to try some, but it greatly varies from the Uyghur offerings even if some dishes overlap each other.
Georgetown location is both modern minimal and traditional feeling all in one package,
Traditional seating is a touch I honestly haven’t even really seen in any middle-eastern places, and I’ve seen my share of those over the years.
Now onto the food –
Stews, unique noodles, and kabobs/kebabs are the name of the game here made with proper flavor and spicy kick, as you would expect from this kind of combination of culinary influences, unless you’re a poor touristy bloke who somehow managed to find this place, ordered a kazan kebab plate, all while yapping on his phone, took a few pics of it, poked a couple bites into it and started raging at the owner that it was TOO spicy! She offered to make em something else off the menu, but he used “no-English” excuse and just stormed off without paying. For fudge’s sake, people, don’t be like that tool bag, ever! IF you can’t handle spice, just freaklng ASK the restaurant what dishes aren’t or to make you something that isn’t spicy. It’s honestly not that bloody difficult, especially when you can clearly run your mouth non-stop. I comforted the owner after my job was done because I feel for her in this sort of situation.
With that story out of the way just like the potatoes above, we get to the real shmeat of this post –
The kebabs that tasted JUST like back home, with proper spices to boot! I’ve been to my share of Russian stores and occasional restaurants none of which captured the flavor of shashlik from my childhood memories quite like Eerkin’s did! I was honestly blown away and taken aback with these. The smokey flavor unique to most if not all middle eastern places that specialize in kabobs that I’ve had. These alone I would readily recommend folks, especially in the area, to go and try sometime!
And that’s all of this debrief of this fantastic and uncommon local chain!
Leave a Reply