The oil industry has brought an international food scene to Atyrau that is unusual for a city of its size in Central Asia. There are restaurants serving Russian, European, and Asian food alongside the local Kazakh cuisine. The Ural River and Caspian Sea mean fresh fish is a fixture — try beshbarmak (boiled meat and noodles) and various sturgeon dishes when in season, though sturgeon is now heavily regulated and genuinely wild Caspian sturgeon is rare.
The central area near the Ural River has the best concentration of restaurants. Many of the better places cater to the oil industry's foreign workers and maintain reasonable standards of hygiene and English menus.