Inside Montreal’s Uyghur Restaurant Boom

Religious activities have been restricted, the Uyghur language is being suppressed, and families are placed under near-total surveillance, with police checkpoints every few hundred meters in Uyghur neighbourhoods. Likely one of Montreal's first Uyghur restaurants, Arzou Express, opened in 2005, and then there was Restaurant Uyghur in Chinatown. The restaurant got its start three years ago, when a Uyghur truck driver named Elzat Elham decided he was tired of life on the road. "I had three kids - now four - and I didn't want to leave them alone all the time," he says. Uyghur food is well represented across China, in humble noodle shops and street carts run by migrants from Xinjiang, as well as in lavish banquet halls with nightly belly dancing and musical performances featuring the tembor, a type of Uyghur lute. Montreal's Uyghur restaurant owners say the bulk of their clientele are Chinese, with most of the remainder being immigrants from Russia and Central Asia, as well as Muslim families looking for a halal meal. Located about a kilometer away from Le Taklamakan in Lasalle, Ozgu is small but sunny, with stacks of Uyghur books on the bar counter and portraits of 11th century Uyghur poets on the wall. Last August, he opened Dolan Uyghur Restaurant with business partner Ferdos Firket, taking advantage of the pandemic recession to buy a turnkey Cantonese restaurant that had gone out of business.