7 Best Things To Eat at Elza Fancy Foods
Kuksu is a noodle soup whose name means "noodle soup" in Korean.![]()
This week Counter Culture rolls into one of the city's most unique restaurants, Elza Fancy Foods. The menu represents the Uzbek-Korean-Russian cooking of Uzbekistan's Korean population. Much of the food is cheap, fascinating, and delicious, too. Here are our recommendations for the first-timer.
1. Kuksu (above photo) -- At first glance this looks like a routine Chinese lo mein soup, only skewed toward Korean tastes, but a second reveals that the roster of ingredients makes this more like a floating form of bibimbap. And who ever heard of lo mein with lamb? No matter how you interpret it, the soup is scrumptious and a perfect light meal.
2. Chicken Tabaka -- This Georgian invention (aka "roadkill chicken") is smashed under a brick as it's roasted, and was transmitted to nearly every corner of the former Soviet Union. In the Korean-Uzbek style, though, it's presented without broth and smeared with a sweet chili sauce.![]()
3. Mash-Hurdy -- Basically, it's a minute steak smeared with mayo and wrapped up inside a thin omelet. Did it originate as a Uzbek form of fast food? Origin aside, this wrap is one you won't be embarrassed to be seen eating.![]()
This is the Brighton Beach branch, but there's one nearly identical in Bensonhurst.![]()




























