First Look: Yurt, Hong Kong’s ‘first modern Central Asian restaurant’
The Kazakh founders of this SoHo restaurant eventually aim to expand it into a cultural hub, seeing an outpouring of support from the local Central Asian community
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”.