The Curious Cuisine of Kars

Slam shut went the border gates, taking with them any chance for Kars to play a role as a handy stepping stone into the Caucasus. The city was left with only one other card to play, namely the ruins of the abandoned city of Ani, 45 kilometers away on the border with Armenia. Ani is amazing and would surely be a dead cert for the UNESCO World Heritage List were it not for politics. Regardless, Kars is a detour too far for many visitors, which means that they never get to discover its curious cuisine, which is especially interesting in winter, the time of year when cooked goose pops up on local menus.

“Kaz var (We have goose),” say the signs in restaurant windows, which is enough to make anyone except a vegetarian start licking their lips. Unfortunately, they turn out to be something of a come-on since any actual request to be served with said goose results only in mournful looks all round, and much muttering about expense and the need to order in advance, never a good sign when you’re a tourist on a tight schedule.

The goods news is that a restaurant whose sole raison d’être is the serving of goose has finally opened its doors in downtown Kars (on Şehit Polis Nuri Yıldız Sokak to be precise). Nuran Özyılmaz and her daughters saw a gap in the market for those who’d had their fill of kebabs. Now they’re roasting the birds at the Kars Kazevi on a seven-day-a-week, year-round basis, dishing up big helpings of goose on a bed of bulgur pilaf and turşu (pickles), with ayran to wash it all down. The birds are reared on local farms, then slaughtered at about eight months and prepared for cooking by village women. “We eat everything,” says Nuran Hanım, who learnt how to cook the birds from her mother. “But we only serve the main part of the body here -- the village women keep the heads and feet.”

Older people claim to remember the days when geese were smoked on local chimneypots while also reminiscing about how they used to be cooked in traditional tandır (pit) ovens. Nowadays all such time-consuming quirkiness has been consigned to history, and even in the Kazevi, the geese are roasted in a kitchen to do Arçelik proud. “It’s completely organic,” Nuran Hanım reminds me although no one in town has seen fit to jump on the goose-fat bandwagon yet.

But goose is not the only culinary surprise to be had in Kars. The “piti” sold at Cafe Kristal on Halitpaşa Caddesi turns out to be a curious cross between soup and stew. Served in a blue enamel mug, piti metamorphoses into an unexpectedly filling two-course meal with a complicated serving procedure. First, some of the meat stock is poured out into a bowl and sprinkled with strips of lavaş (pitta) bread. Then the remaining contents of the mug are emptied into a second bowl, and, hey presto, you have a wonderful chickpea and lamb main course as well.

Anyone who has ever visited Iran will recognize piti as a cousin of abgusht, the much-loved staple food frequently served in teahouses. In Iran the chickpeas and meat are pounded down into a paste which means that you can’t fish out the chunks of lamb fat that come with them. Either way, it’s a delicious and surprisingly cheap treat, unlike the goose which weighs in at around TL 30 a portion.

A few bakers in the Kars back streets also sell kete, roundels of a thick bread with a texture closer to cake. It makes the perfect accompaniment for the holey gravyer cheese you’ll see on sale all along Halitpaşa Caddesi in shops that also stock excellent kaşar peyniri, a strong Cheddar-like cheese, tulum peyniri, which is matured inside a goatskin, and honey straight from the comb. Like goose, Kars gravyeri comes with a hefty price tag of around TL 30 per kilo. On the other hand, it also comes with an interesting history, too. From 1878 to 1920, Kars was occupied by the Russians, and many of the surrounding villages acquired populations of Westerners, including a group of Swiss cheese-makers who adapted the recipe for Emmental to create Kars gravyeri.

If you can manage to tear yourself away from the restaurants and cheese shops, it’s well worth taking a turn around the Little Russia back streets of old Kars, which boast an architecture quite unlike anything else in Turkey. Unexpectedly wide and tree-shaded, they’re lined with pastel-colored, one-story buildings with sloping roofs, neat little dormer windows and lots of neoclassical detail. Some are made of sturdy basalt, which might make them tend to the dour were it not for the frilly wooden trims tacked around the rooflines. One especially lovely old house has been turned into the stylish Kar’s Hotel, well worth a splurge if you want to immerse yourself in the full-on Kars experience.

The back streets meander down to the Kars Cayı (river), where the renovated Evliya Cami does its best to overshadow the conically domed 10th century Armenian Church of the Holy Apostles. Recent conversion of the church into a mosque makes it possible to wander inside and admire the marble rood screen installed when what had been converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest reverted to being a church during the Russian occupation. Across the other side of town, the Russians also built themselves a brand-new place of worship, the enormous Alexander Nevsky Church, which is now the Fethiye Cami.

Over time, the Russian presence in Kars mutated into a specifically Armenian presence. The last mayor of Kars decided that it would be a good idea to commemorate the relationship between Turkey and Armenia by erecting a 35-meter-tall statue of a man and a woman on the hillside facing the old citadel. Not surprisingly, this statue, called officially “Insanlık (Humanity)” but unofficially “Dostluk (Friendship),” has proved extremely controversial and is now slated to be torn down again. Not so long ago, hopes were high that the border might soon reopen in the wake of President Abdullah Gül’s “football diplomacy” foray into Armenia in 2007. Since then, progress seems to have stalled. If the statue really does come down, the gesture might turn out to be all too sadly symbolic of the current state of play.

Actually, this is not a good time for statues in Kars. The previous mayor also commissioned an outsize statue of a goose along the same lines as the one of a rooster in Denizli and of a Van cat in Van. This has also met with disapproval, which means that you’ll now find it exiled to the back of the bus station where it stares at a wall like a naughty child sent to stand in the corner for talking in class.

WHERE TO STAY

Kar’s Hotel.

Tel: 0474-212 1616

Grand Ani Hotel.

Tel: 0474-223 7500

Güngoren Oteli.

Tel: 0474-212 5630

Hotel Karabağ. Tel: 0474-212 3480 (undergoing renovation)

HOW TO GET THERE

There are daily Turkish Airlines flights to Kars from İstanbul and Ankara. Otherwise, Doğu Ekspresi trains travel to Kars (and could continue to Yerevan if the border ever reopens) while buses arrive from nearby towns such as Erzurum.

Fethiye Cami

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The Dostluk Statue

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Church of Holy Apostles