First Look: Yurt, Hong Kong’s ‘first modern Central Asian restaurant’

While Hongkongers scout remote destinations for their first holiday in 2026, a journey of discovery for the palate is now on offer closer to home. Yurt, newly opened on SoHo’s Elgin Street, is bringing the hitherto unexplored flavours of Central Asia to the heart of the city, proving you don’t need a boarding pass to be an adventurous gourmand.

In a dining scene that prides itself on diversity, Central Asia has remained conspicuously absent from the many menus on offer in Hong Kong. For the founders behind Yurt, filling that gap has been a project a long time in the making.

“This idea has been in the back of all our minds for years, even before we met,” they share. The catalyst was when Xeniya Tregubenko was introduced to fellow Kazakh native Ali Nuraly through a mutual friend early last year. What started as a casual chat quickly touched on a common dream – to introduce Central Asian flavours to Hong Kong.

For both, Yurt marks a distinctive new life chapter. For Tregubenko, a seven-year Hong Kong resident, the restaurant is about “putting down permanent roots” for her culture in her adopted city. For Nuraly, a more recent arrival, it signals “the exciting beginning of my entrepreneurial journey”.

Although the pair were confident in the appeal of their plan, Nuraly admits that taking the first concrete step towards opening Yurt was daunting. “Introducing a completely unknown cuisine … it was a leap of faith,” he says.

The greater challenge, however, was one of cultural translation. “It’s one thing to cook the dishes; it’s another to bring the spirit,” Nuraly explains.

The man tasked with helping achieve this goal is head chef Marat Zakaryayev, another native of Kazakhstan whose culinary experience runs from Almaty to London. “My goal is for the first-time taster to understand our homeland through its flavours,” he says.