Silk Road Choyhona, web site, 28 Bureau Street, Gaithersburg, MD, 301-330-5262 (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [Google | Bill & Elena | zabihah | ylp | Don Rockwell]
The best Uzbekistan restaurant in this entire area! And an A+ for clientele and atmosphere. That said, most Uzbeki food is boring, and their rather large selection of Russian dishes is only so-so. Still, you can have an excellent meal here. The soups are delicious, including the cold yogurt soup and the third soup on the menu, the Mastava, make sure you put in the hot red stuff and the cream for full effect. The cabbage salad was pretty good and the manti were above-average, not too doughy. The Kutabi was my favorite, thin breads with ground meat or green inside, put on the yogurt sauce for a very yummy snack and then order some more of them. The kabobs were OK but not as good as the best Afghan places around. In sum, definitely recommended but if you are uncritical in your choices it is easy to walk away unimpressed.
Been there. The place is mediocre, period. It still might be the best Uzbek restaurant in the area, but only because another one (Rus Uz, Arlington, VA) is equally bad. Maybe in due time they will get better, but at the moment I would definitely avoid them.
Uzbek cuisine has become very popular in Russia over the past twenty years, and all localities with sufficient density of people of exUSSR descent are likely to have a good Uzbek place or two. I personally know several Uzbek restaurants in Philadelphia and many more in New York; it is there you should go to find the real stuff.
I believe that this Gaithersburg restaurant is a sort of a branch of the Baltimore place with a similar name (http://silkroadbistro.com). I never been in that Baltimore restaurant but what I heard was very encouraging. Reisterstown Rd. area is exactly where you should be looking for more or less authentic Russian/Soviet food within a reasonable distance from DC (of course, it is dwarfed by the Russian food paradise of Brighton Beach which is much further away)
I will probably check this place again in about six months. Chances are they will be able to find a real cook. However, a quite low density of Russian/Soviet people in our area (there are plenty of them around but they are all spread over the entire metropolitan Washington area with no distinct Russian area) makes me skeptical about that.