After dropping out of university, where he’d dabbled in criminal law then IT, Olzhas Karymsakov found himself in a rut. Despite landing a truck driving job in State College, pressure was mounting to return home to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and help with the family businesses—a restaurant and three spas with attached kitchens.
But Karymsakov resisted. “I always wanted something different,” he told Billy Penn. “The American dream, as people say—I just wanted to try it out.”
A compromise was found in the form of new restaurant Silk Way, recently opened at 507 S. 6th street by Karymsakov, with some starting support from his family.
The restaurant’s name refers to the network of Eurasian routes used by traders until the mid-15th century, on which Almaty served as a center of commerce and agriculture. The menu is a celebration of Central Asian cuisines.
“Kazakhstan is a mixed place with a lot of ethnicities and cultures and nationalities, and our kitchen represents that,” Karymsakov said.
That representation ranges from Uzbek salads like the pepper-and-tomato achuchuck, and Uyghur specialties like lagman using house-made hand-pulled noodles, to traditional Kazakh dish beshparmak, consisting of beef, mutton, or both, over thin pasta squares and served with a side of spiced meat and onion broth.
Hungarian flavors can be found in the goulash, Armenian in the lyulya kebab, served with pomegranate grains and lavash. There’s plov and spiced cutlets (minced lamb or beef, ground up with potato and onion), as well as plenty of dumplings and stuffed pastries, all made in-house—vegetable samsas, crescent-shaped chebureks, and Georgian meat-and-spiced stuffed khinkals.
For beverages, black, green, and lemon teas, savory yogurt drink ayran, and a boiled fruit compot. Silk Way is BYO.
Much of the menu was set by Karymsakov’s father, Bakytzhan, inspired by the kitchens he oversees in Almaty. Silk Ways’ kitchen, for the restaurant’s first month, is being run by the family — Bakytzhan and younger son Nyko handling the cooking, mother Aigul assisting, and Karymsakov managing front of house with occasional help from his wife.
While settling on the restaurant’s concept was straightforward, making it a reality proved far more challenging, with the opening date frequently pushed back—as indicated by the ‘since 2022’ optimistically incorporated by Karymsakov into the logo’s design and on the printed menus, and still visible. After moving to the US in 2018 for studies that were interrupted by a change in majors and then Covid, and later agreeing on launching a restaurant with his parents’ support, Karymsakov signed a lease for the space at 507 S. 6th street in 2021, but necessary renovations to the historic building—which had originally forced Blackbird out—took longer than expected, as did navigating an L&I process still new to him.
“It was my first time opening a business in America — it’s really different from what we have in our country,” he said, an endeavor he estimates usually “takes a week or so.”
Despite difficulties, Karymsakov held on to the space he’d envisioned a plan for, down to the ceiling lights he’d already ordered, with a design inspired by the thatched roofs of yurts. When Silk Way finally launched with a soft opening two weeks ago, “I wanted to cry,” Karymsakov said. “I put a lot of energy into this.”
With his family set to return to Almaty soon, Karymsakov is busy finalizing a full-time kitchen team, but already has plans for expansions to the menu—a breakfast lineup is being considered, he said, as are cheesesteaks—and, if all goes well, other locations.
“I’m actually happy. And I wanted to make my parents happy,” he said. “Now, “I need to work hard on it so we can keep it going.”
507 S. 6th Street | 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday | $5-$15 | BYOB | 267-694-0228 | @silkwayphiladelphia
