YURTA

YURTA is a modern Kazakh restaurant at 106G Dostyk Avenue in Almaty's Medeu District, one of the city's main north-south boulevards. The kitchen reworks the nomadic food of Kazakhstan, a cuisine built around horse meat, lamb, dairy and flatbreads, in a contemporary, plated style rather than the large communal platters common at traditional venues. Pricing sits in the upper tier for Almaty, at roughly KZT 12,000-22,000 per person, with a 10% service charge included in the bill. The cooking is positioned as elegant and deliberately national in spirit. Among the dishes most associated with the restaurant is horse-meat pastrami served with Kazakh-style gnocchi, a pairing that takes a traditional cured meat and presents it with a European technique. The lamb shank is another main course regularly singled out, and baursaks, the fried dough puffs eaten across Kazakhstan with tea and soups, appear as a staple side. The restaurant also runs a dedicated kumys bar. Kumys is fermented mare's milk, a drink with deep roots on the Kazakh steppe, and a bar devoted to it is unusual even in Almaty, making it the most distinctive feature for visitors curious about traditional beverages. The dining room takes its name and theme from the yurt, the felt-covered nomadic home, and the atmosphere is polished and relaxed rather than casual. Service is added automatically, so no further tip is expected. Opening hours run daily from 12:00 until midnight, which suits both a long lunch and a late dinner. Reservations are recommended for dinner and weekends, and the listing on the 2GIS app is the usual way to book; arriving before 18:30 is the alternative for walk-ins. Because the menu is short on familiar international dishes, the restaurant works well as a first introduction to Kazakh cuisine in a setting more refined than a roadside or bazaar eatery. The central Dostyk Avenue location also makes it easy to combine with an afternoon at nearby parks and shops, and taxis from most central hotels take only a few minutes.