Plov in Baku: What to Order and What to Skip

Overview

Plov is not the city’s alone. Walk east from the Caucasus into Central Asia and rice cooked with meat and fat, under a name from the same root, turns up on every table, from Uzbek osh to Persian polow. What marks the version made here is the method, not the ownership: the rice is steamed on its own, apart from the meat, dried fruit and nuts, and the two are brought together at the table rather than in the pot. That is the Persian and Turkic branch of the family, and it is a different dish from Uzbek plov, where rice, meat, carrot and cumin cook together in one pan from the start.

The rice itself is often tinted with a little saffron — streaked unevenly rather than coloured flat — and finished with butter. Cooked properly, a layer at the base of the pan turns golden and crisp: the qazmaq. A good plov is served with that crust broken off in pieces on top or alongside, never buried and left to go soft underneath.

The most theatrical version, şah plovu — “the shah’s plov” — takes the same rice and wraps it inside a dome of thin flatbread before baking, so it arrives sealed and is cut open at the table, releasing steam as it goes. It belongs to weddings and formal occasions rather than an ordinary lunch, and the wrapping and baking take long enough that some kitchens want warning before they will make it.

The word itself belongs to a family that crossed borders and changed spelling on the way: pilaf, pilau and polo are the same root said differently. Ordering “plov” here and “pilaf” somewhere else is not choosing between two dishes, only between two words for one.

What to order

The everyday version is qovurma plov: saffron rice on one side, a cooked mix of meat — usually lamb — dried apricots, prunes or raisins, and chestnuts on the other, brought to the table separately rather than pre-mixed by the kitchen. Chicken is a common, lighter alternative to lamb, and it is worth asking which is on offer rather than assuming lamb by default.

Ask for the qazmaq if it has not already arrived with the plate. It is not a garnish so much as the point of the dish: crisp, buttery rice that has caught the bottom of the pan. A kitchen proud of its plov will not need reminding, but a small place sometimes plates the crust separately unless asked for it directly.

The dried fruit and nuts are not a side dish that has wandered onto the wrong plate — the sweetness set against the savoury meat and rice is the intended contrast, and eating them together, rather than pushing the fruit to one side, is how the dish is meant to work.

Where şah plovu is on offer, or offered by a kitchen you trust, it is worth ordering ahead rather than expecting it ready on demand: the dome has to be built and baked to order, and a rushed version loses the point of choosing it. Watching it opened at the table, rather than the eating itself, is most of the reason to choose it over the everyday plate.

What to avoid

Rice and meat that arrive already mixed together in one pan, cooked as a single stew rather than served as separate rice and qovurma, is the surest sign a kitchen has taken the one-pot, Central Asian shortcut rather than the local method — quicker to cook and to plate, and genuinely a different dish wearing the same name.

A crust that is soft, grey, or simply absent means the rice was steamed too briefly, reheated, or never given the chance to catch the pan at all. A properly made plov should at least be able to offer qazmaq.

Watch the colour of the rice itself. Real saffron streaks the grains unevenly, some deep gold and some barely touched; a flat, uniform yellow across every grain is usually turmeric or dye standing in for it — cheaper, and with none of the aroma.

A plov offered as a single fixed item on a menu aimed at passing trade, with no choice of meat and no mention of qazmaq or şah plovu, is a menu written for someone who will not ask. A kitchen that actually makes several kinds tends to say so, unprompted.

Practicalities

Plov here is squarely a lunch and celebration dish rather than a late-evening one — hearty enough that it is rarely what people reach for at ten at night, and the dish most likely to appear at a wedding or a family gathering, especially in its şah plovu form.

It is not something to eat on the move. Where a griddle snack like qutab can be eaten walking, plov is cooked to order, served hot, and meant to be sat down to — treat it as a proper meal rather than something to grab between sights.

A full plate of qovurma plov, with meat, dried fruit and chestnuts, costs noticeably more than a bowl of soup or a plate of qutab, in line with the ingredients and the time the kitchen puts into it. Şah plovu, built and baked to order, costs more again, and is the one dish here worth asking about a day ahead if a particular date matters.

Cash and card habits follow the rest of the city: small, family-run places serving home-style plov are the likeliest to want cash, in line with the smaller shops elsewhere in the centre.