Central Asian restaurant.

The other week I went to a Central Asian restaurant in the city, with my one friend who delivers singing telegrams.

It was full of Central Asian families with more women than men and kids, and an occasional Russian, and the whole dining room was shaped like a yurt, with these arches painted up to look like the yurt's supports going up to the ceiling, in which they had like this inset circle with a ceiling beyond it just visible through the hole, kind of like the sky behind the smokehole.

The menu was a mix of Soviet dishes and noodle dishes and whatnot, and it was pretty good.

By the end of the meal, there was also a number of like 20- and 30-something Central Asian guys there, a couple there with each other, and one with a friend and like a girlfriend or something.

I don't know why, it was maybe something in the way they dressed or held themselves, but they seemed a fuck of a lot more masculine than guys from typical Asian countries (China, Taiwan, Japan, a lot of times Korea), and it wasn't just the sparse facial hair.

There's something very Mongol and macho about them. 

Maybe it's the Soviet experience, too?