A few weeks ago we reviewed the new Taste of Sichuan restaurant; now another regional Chinese cuisine has arrived in Walthamstow. Chinese cooking in the UK is now exploring beyond the westernised versions of Cantonese food. This is not a typical Chinese restaurant, there’s no sweet and sour chicken being served here. China is a big country, and cuisines vary in different provinces.

According to a quick Google search, the Uyghurs are a Turkic speaking Muslim minority group living in the Xinjiang province, bordering countries including Mongolia, Russia, Afghanistan and Kazakhstan. There’s complicated religious, cultural and political issues here that I can’t even begin to understand, so we’ll stick to what we know – food. Traditional Uyghur cooking is a mix of influences from the old Silk Road trading routes including Turkish, Mongolian, Persian and Chinese.

Etles is a fairly basic cafe place, warmed up with rugs on the walls, a painted ceiling and bright tablecloths. The menu offers pictures of the Uyghur specialities including some rather scary offal stuff like tongue salad.

Next we tucked into the recommended typical Uyghur dish ‘Ganbian Chaomian’ (£9) – hand pulled Lagman / Leghmen noodles, stir-fried with gently-spiced beef and peppers. It was a hearty version of the more familiar Chinese chowmein, and good as a sharing dish.

But our favourite dish was the unpronounceable ‘Ququre’ (£8) – hand made wonton dumplings in a delicious, light meat stock soup. This was pure comfort food. Delicate, soft dumplings filled with lovely tender beef.