Lavash from a clay oven, dolma wrapped by hand, apricots, pomegranates and barbecue by the river. What to eat in Armenia, and where.
Armenian food is what happens when a mountainous, fertile land at the crossroads of empires cooks for 3,000 years. It is generous, seasonal, and built around the table — meals here are long, loud and central to everything. Come hungry, and come with time.
Lavash: the bread that holds it all together
Start with lavash, the paper-thin flatbread baked against the wall of a clay tonir oven — a tradition so central to Armenian identity that UNESCO added it to its list of the world’s intangible cultural heritage. Watching a village grandmother slap the dough into the glowing oven is worth the trip alone; eating it thirty seconds later, wrapped around herbs and cheese, is better still.
Khorovats: the national barbecue
If lavash is the bread of Armenia, khorovats is its Sunday religion — skewers of pork, lamb or vegetables grilled over vine cuttings, usually by a river, always with more food than anyone can finish. It is less a dish than an event, and you will be adopted into one before your trip is over.
Dolma, harissa and the home-cooked heart
The real depth of Armenian cooking is in the home: dolma (vine or cabbage leaves stuffed with spiced meat and rice), harissa (a slow porridge of wheat and chicken that borders on sacred), fresh spas soup, and mountains of herbs, radishes and pickles on every table. We build a home-cooked meal with a local family into most of our trips — it is invariably the meal guests remember most.
Nobody leaves an Armenian table hungry. It is, quite genuinely, considered a failure of hospitality.
Fruit, sweets and the sweet tooth
Armenia calls itself the land of apricots for good reason — and the pomegranate is a national symbol. Don’t miss gata (a buttery sweet bread every region makes differently), sujukh (walnuts threaded and dipped in grape must), and dried fruit stuffed with nuts sold in glorious pyramids at the GUM market in Yerevan.
And to drink
- Wine from Areni — the world’s oldest known winemaking region.
- Armenian brandy (“cognac”), famously beloved by Churchill.
- Oghi, the fierce homemade fruit vodka you will be offered in every village.
- Tan, a savoury yoghurt drink that is the local answer to a hot afternoon.
Our Armenian Wine Roads tour is built entirely around this table — family wineries, village kitchens, a lavash lesson and a harvest lunch. Bring your appetite; we’ll bring the rest.