Hamsiköy Sütlaç

Hamsiköy is a village at around eleven hundred metres on the old road over the Zigana pass, and it is famous across Turkey for one thing: sütlaç, rice pudding. The claim rests on the milk - cattle grazing on high Black Sea pasture, with the grass and the water credited for it - and on the method, which is a long slow cook and then a spell under the grill so the top browns and forms a skin that is the point of the dish. It is served warm in shallow earthenware bowls, sometimes with hazelnuts, which are the region's other crop. The village has a run of restaurants doing sütlaç and mountain food - kuymak, the cheese-and-cornmeal dish also called mıhlama, trout, and grilled meat - and Turkish travellers stop as a matter of course on the way up to Sümela or over the pass toward Gümüşhane. It carries a geographical indication. The village itself is small and green and the setting does no harm.

What you actually see

• The baked skin - the browned top on the earthenware bowl.
• The village restaurants - the row doing sütlaç and mountain food.
• The kuymak - the cheese and cornmeal dish alongside.
• The mountain setting - pasture and forest on the pass road.

When to go

Year-round; the pass road can be difficult in winter snow. It is a stop on the way to Sümela rather than a destination in itself.

Honest expectations

It is rice pudding - good rice pudding, but visitors sometimes expect more from the reputation. The village is small and the restaurants are similar to each other. Weekend traffic on the road is heavy.

Nearby

Sümela monastery is up the Maçka valley; Trabzon is 45 minutes down toward the coast.