Tumaris 突玛丽斯新疆餐厅

With its staid, wooden furnishings, snaking corridors, opulent private rooms and chandeliers galore, Tumaris is far from your typical yangrou chuan’r dive. This new Chaoyang Beilu restaurant is decidedly upscale, Central Asian style, with fine food and Uyghur-speaking staff and customers attesting to its authenticity. The extensive menu offers an interesting range of Xinjiang cuisine. The kebabs are exquisite, if not pricey – RMB 10 gets you a Jurassic-sized skewer of massive, meaty chunks, enough to satisfy any lamb craving, while a skewer of barbecued kidney (烤肥腰) costs RMB 68 and skewer platters featuring everything from lamb ribs to specialty meats and various sheep’s organs range from RMB 238-698. Other mutton-based specialties include whole roasted goat (kao quan yang, 靠全羊, RMB 1,888) and an intriguing-looking dish called “Lamb in Naan Pit (RMB 68)” consisting of a grilled mutton slab on a bed of nang bread. Noodle dishes (RMB 32 for a plate of gan bian chao mian – fried noodles with broadbeans and red chilis), beef ribs, soups, Chinese-style cold dishes (i.e. wood-ear fungus) and the requisite shark’s fin, lobster and sea cucumber are also on the menu; and as with virtually every large Xinjiang joint in town, bellydancers and Uyghur musicians perform nightly from 7-10pm.