Azerbaijani food, cooked the long way
Dolma rolled a leaf at a time. Lavash rolled thin. Chudu by the plate, and cakes for the day that matters. We cook what an Azerbaijani family cooks — in the quantity you need, for the date you give us.
Ordering here is a message rather than a checkout. Tell us the date and roughly how many, and we will come back with what is possible and what it costs.
The things that leave here most
Dolma, chudu and cakes — and lavash, the bread the rest of it is eaten with, which is on the menu page with everything else. Nothing is made in advance. Each of these is cooked for the day it is going to.
Dolma
Vine leaves, rolled one at a time, and never in a hurry.
Chudu
A filled pastry, worked thin and baked until the layers come apart.
Cakes
For the day that matters, and sized for the number of people at it.
Nar is the word for pomegranate
Nar is the Azerbaijani word for pomegranate. It is not a decoration there and it is not a garnish — it is a season. The fruit comes in through October and November, it goes into everything from a salad to the sauce that ends up on fish, and in Goychay, where the ground suits it better than anywhere else, there has been a festival for it every autumn since 2006.
In 2020 UNESCO put Azerbaijan’s pomegranate festivity and culture on the same list that dolma and thin bread are on. A fruit with its own entry in the cultural heritage of a country is a fair thing to name a kitchen after.
We did not make this up
If you are meeting Azerbaijani food for the first time there is no way to tell a tradition from a marketing line. So here is the part you can go and check: three of the things this kitchen is built on are on UNESCO's list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.
- Thin bread, incl. lavash
- UNESCO list, 2016
- Dolma, making and sharing
- UNESCO list, 2017
- Pomegranate festivity and culture
- UNESCO list, 2020
The lists are public. The recipes are not — those change from one house to the next, which is rather the point of them.
Three steps, and you only do the first
There is no basket on this site and no delivery slot to pick, because nothing is sitting on a shelf. An order starts as a message and becomes a date in the book.
- 01Send us the date
The day you need it, roughly how many people, and what the occasion is if there is one. A few lines is plenty — the form, an email or a message on the number all reach the same kitchen.
- 02We write back
What we can make for that date, what it will come to, and how much notice it needs. If the date is too tight for what you have asked for we will say so and suggest what is possible instead.
- 03It gets cooked for your day
Once you have said yes, it is in the book. How it reaches you — collected or brought to you — is settled in the same conversation, because it depends on where you are and what it is.