Where to stay

Carruba Boutique Hotel In a peaceful part of town, a short uphill
walk from the harbour, this quiet hotel provides fine views over Kaş and the bay. It’s named after the impressive 250-year-old carob tree nearby, once vital to the area’s economy. Local activities might include turtle watching, canoeing or, for the adventurous, paragliding and scuba diving. Breakfast in the tree-shaded garden consists of a large array of local produce – vegetables, cheeses, olives, jams, honey – with home- made breads and pastries, plus classic cooked Turkish breakfast dishes, coffees and teas. Doubles from £140, including breakfast. Engin Sok No 3, Kaş, 00 90 541 836 3045, carrubahotel.com.

Casa Bi Hotel This elegant, family-owned hotel is set on the rugged coast of the Çukurbağ Peninsula, around 6km from the centre of Kaş. Its 16 rooms and suites, some with private pools, are linked by terraces and gardens and have fine views of the bay. A private platform, with bar service, gives access to the turquoise sea. Enjoy a buffet breakfast of local produce and à la carte Turkish breakfast dishes – menemen eggs, börek or small savoury pies – around the hotel’s large pool or on the restaurant terrace. Doubles from £240, including breakfast. Metin Toker Sok No 14, Kaş, 00 90 530 015 0770, casabiotel.com

Hotel Villa Mahal A small, stylish and expertly run boutique hotel with 13 rooms and suites and four villas, all of which come with sea views and a private terrace, with access to a private beach. Facilities include a spa, triangular infinity pool, terrace bar and beach bar. Kalkan is a 20-minute walk or five-minute drive away, or you can take a ten-minute water taxi to Kalkan harbour. Friendly staff are on hand to offer advice on visiting the fine archaeological sites and other places of interest nearby. Breakfast on the roof terrace will set you up for the day: try the good local yoghurt and honey, olives and cheeses, and the attractive selection of traditional breads and pastries, egg dishes, preserved meats, fresh fruit juices, coffees and teas. Doubles from £251, including breakfast (three-night minimum stay). PK No 4, Kalkan, 00 90 242 844 3268, villamahal.com

Radisson Blu A modern, spacious 50-room hotel in attractive grounds, 5km from the centre of Kaş. Helpful staff can arrange local trips and transport or guide you to the marina, archaeological sites and shops. A five-minute buggy ride takes you to a small private, rocky cove with bar service and access to the sea from handsome, wooden platforms. Breakfast and dinner are served in the comfortable dining room or around the large pool. For breakfast, there’s an extensive buffet of fresh, slightly salty and semi-hard cheeses, yoghurts, preserved meats, pickles, honey, jams, seasonal vegetables and fruits, including sweet local bananas, and freshly baked sweet and savoury breads, rolls, small pies and cakes. Drinks include espresso, herb teas, Turkish tea and Turkish coffee. Doubles from £123 including breakfast. Andifli Mahallesi, Çukurbağ Peninsula, Demokrasi Cad No 28, Kaş,
00 90 242 505 6560, radissonhotels.com

Travel Information

Kaş and Kalkan are small historic towns in the province of Antalya in south- western Türkiye, on the part of the Mediterranean coastline known as the Turquoise Coast and at the foot of the Taurus Mountains. The nearest airport is Dalaman, a two-hour drive from Kaş and one hour 45 minutes from Kalkan. Flight time from the UK is approx. four hours. Currency is the Turkish lira (TRY) and time is three hours ahead of GMT.

GETTING THERE
Turkish Airlines fly from London to Dalaman via Istanbul all year. turkishairlines.com
easyjet offer flights from London Gatwick and Luton from April to early November. easyjet.com

GETTING ROUND
Car hire is the best way to access the isolated beaches and dramatic mountain roads of Antalya. Avis Car Rental have an office at Dalaman Airport. Alternatively, Kaş and Kalkan hotels will arrange an airport transfer. avis.co.uk

RESOURCES
Go Türkiye is the official website for the Turkish tourism agency and is packed with information to help you plan your trip. tga.gov.tr
Local tourist information A small information office on Republic Square, Kaş, is open Monday-Friday.

Where to eat

Prices are per person for two mezes, a main course and half a carafe of wine unless otherwise stated

Bi’lokma Family-run, all-day restaurant in the centre of Kaş. Small dishes include shrimps with butter, and yaprak ciğeri (liver ‘cut like a leaf’), with mains like manti dumplings or aubergine and lamb stew, followed by home-made baklava or creamy rice pudding. Wines include Turkish Prodom and Alexandria muscat. From £14. Uğur Mumcu Cad No 21, Kaş, 00 90 242 836 3942, bilokma.com.tr

Değirmen Restaurant Spacious, welcoming restaurant in the hills 500m above Kalkan. Super-fresh trout come from the tank you pass on entry, ingredients for the simple menu from local village growers – try the trout with rocket and roasted pepper. Open April-October; booking recommended at weekends. From £13.50. Islamlar Sok No 103, Kalkan, 00 90 242 838 6295

Dudu Mutfak Popular café close to the King’s Tomb, with a view over the harbour. Order the set breakfast of local cheeses, börek, olives, fresh breads, eggs and fruit, including a small, sweet local banana, and fig ‘jam’ (like fruit in syrup). Breakfast with tea, £7.30. Süleyman Sandikçi Sok No 1/3, Kaş, 00 90 537 431 0009 Mezetaryen Share mezes or order a main while people-watching from the terrace overlooking Republic Square. Expect mussels stuffed with saffron rice, hibeş and lionfish with apple and basil. Booking recommended. From £16. Cumhuriyet Meydani No 14, Kaş, 00 90 544 687 0528

Oburus Momus Menus change seasonally at this popular vegetarian/ vegan restaurant. Friendly, knowledgeable staff help you match wines; they do imaginative cocktails too. Starters include timbale of avocado and celery remoulade with walnuts; mains could be oyster-mushroom pasta or wild mushroom bulgur risotto. Leave space for berry tart or peanut, chocolate and salted caramel tart. Booking recommended. From £30.Adil Akba Sok No 13, Kaş, 00 90 507 704 2032, oburus.com

Patara Gözleme Evi Order gözleme at this family-run, open-fronted pancake house a few minutes’ walk from the entrance to the archaeological site of Patara and watch it being cooked on a large hotplate over an open fire. Gözleme, home-grown tomato salad, olives and ayran £7. Gelemiş, Merkez Sok No 26, Patara, 00 90 535 746 9573

Taş Bahçe Breakfast is an important meal here, and on Sunday mornings it’s served up to the sound of jazz in an attractive courtyard near Republic Square – co-owner Tunç Hamarat used to be a DJ. An array of traditional breakfast dishes includes menemen, salads and vegetables, fresh breads, eggs, pastirma, preserved sausages and local cheeses with jams and honey. 8am-3pm, Tuesday-Sunday (book ahead on Sundays). Turkish breakfast with tea £7.50. Hütümet Cad No 3, Kaş, 00 90 535 343 2059

Taşra Restaurant Take 50 tree-shaded steps down to two grassy terraces above a quiet bay, where Hilal Tildirim prepares dishes with produce from Suna Sun Hotel’s farm. Try her sourdough bread, Mediterranean prawns on polenta or warm pear with sheep’s cheese and walnuts. Booking recommended. From £16.50. Bülent Kalkavan Sok No 10, Çukurbağ Yarimadasi, Kaş, 00 90 242 836 1636, sunasunhotel.com

Vati Ocakbaşi Enjoy sunset over the yacht marina as you linger over well-prepared dishes of local meats, with as many other ingredients as possible from small, family- farms. Try the shish kebab with onion and parsley salad, or kibbeh (small patties of spiced, ground meat encased in mashed bulgur then fried) and iç bakla salad. Booking recommended. From £18.80. Uğur Mumcu Cad No 37, Kaş Yeni Marina, Kaş, 00 90 242 836 1980, vatiocakbasi.com

Food Glossary

Ayran

Yogurt drink made with cows’ or sheep’s milk, iced water and salt and, sometimes, dried mint

Bulgur

This cracked wheat is commonly used in salads, as a side dish to grills or a filling for sarma (see below)

Corbaşi tarhana

A filling soup, mostly eaten in winter, made with tarhana (a dried mix of wheat grain and yoghurt), vegetables and garlic

Dolmas

Stuffed vegetables, leaves or flowers

Gözleme

Large, round, thin flatbread, like a pancake but made with flour, salt, water and yogurt or oil, cooked on a hotplate and covered with a filling of spinach and onion, cheeses, spicy potato or meat; it’s folded over and cut into sections for serving

Halka tatlisi

Street food consisting of dough shaped into small balls, plump cylinders or horseshoes, fried and dipped in syrup

Hibeş

Meze dip traditional to Antalya, made with tahini, lemon juice and garlic, sprinkled with cumin and ground sweet pepper

Iç bakla

Salad of cooked, dried broad beans with fresh dill and an oil and lemon juice dressing

Kaymak

Cows’ or sheep’s milk simmered very slowly until thick, rich and creamy and a crust forms on top (similar to clotted cream)

Keşkek

A traditional wedding dish – ‘split’ wheat or barley, butter and lamb or kid cooked very slowly until falling apart. This is one of the dishes included in the ‘intangible cultural heritage of Türkiye’ by Unesco

Manti

Small ravioli-like dumplings, with a variety of savoury fillings, simmered or oven-baked in a sauce

Menemen

A favourite breakfast dish of scrambled eggs with tomatoes, peppers and onions, with or without meat

Pastirma

Salted, air-dried beef or goat; its name is derived from the verb ‘to press’, a method of preserving meat in the Turkish nomadic past

Sarma

Meaning ‘rolled up’, this is another name for stuffed leaves – grape, mulberry, pickled cabbage or young beetroot – filled with rice or bulgur, herbs and spices and, sometimes, ground meat

Sucuk

Sausages named after an old Turkish word meaning ‘to take out the juice and dry’

Food and Travel Review

While the deep-gold sun sets slowly over the bewitching small bay, chef Belkis Öztürk ponders her work. ‘My love of cooking came from my grandmother,’ she says. ‘She used to make a delicious bread with tarhana, a mixture of wheat grain and yogurt that’s spread out in the sun to dry, then broken up and stored to make soup and bread later. She would get up at 4am to make puffy flatbread on a hotplate over a fire.’ Thirty-year-old Belkis is in charge of the busy kitchen of Oburus Momus, the first vegetarian restaurant in the Turkish coastal town of Kaş. ‘I left university for the kitchen – I’m in love with our food here,’ she explains. And, when she decided to stop eating meat, she found she could draw on a rich family knowledge of grains for risotto and pasta, on vegetables, funghi and herbs for a host of imaginative dishes and on local fruits for delicious drinks.

Along the small peninsula south-west of Kaş, chef Hilal Tildirim also draws on her grandmother’s expertise to bring the tastes of home cooking and good breads to the table at secluded Taşra Restaurant, set on small terraces high above the pristine water. Until 2017, Hilal worked in the financial world; she left to train as a chef. ‘When I was young, my grandmother in Antalya taught me how to cook and I still make her hibeş tahini dip and her yoghurt with pumpkin. I use a natural starter for breads and a slow dough- rise,’ she says. On this serene evening, cooled by a light breeze from among the lemon trees, she continues, ‘Our butter is from a nearby dairy and we grow our own fruit, vegetables, herbs and memecik olives on our farm in the north-west Taurus highlands.’

Much of the olive crop here is harvested early in November, while the olives are still green; they give a mild oil, which is the preferred local taste. Recently, 2,000-year-old, Hellenistic-era olive presses have been discovered towards the east, near Antalya, and it’s thought they too, like these modern restaurant kitchens, were worked by women.

The towns of Kaş (pronounced ‘kash’ and meaning ‘eyebrow’) and Kalkan lie on Türkiye’s southern, Mediterranean coast, where the Taurus Mountains reach the sea. The region has a long, vibrant history. It was first mentioned in 12th-century BC Anatolian Hittite texts; four centuries on, it was home to the powerful Lycians who – interestingly, given the talented female chefs here now – are known to have been a matrilineal society. Then, 200 years later, the ancient Greeks grew wealthy on Lycia’s maritime trade – cedar wood and sea sponges – and established Antiphellos, ‘the land opposite the rocks’, where Kaş now stands. Their impressive open-air theatre, built to seat 4,000, is still used. After the Romans came, conquered and thrived, the area was annexed by the Arabs. In the 14th century, the Ottomans began building a picturesque town on the hillside leading down to the port. An hour’s drive west, along a road with spectacular views of the beautiful coastline and a sea that boasts glorious shades of blue, Kalkan holds a weekly farmers’ market within its lively bazaar. At its entrance, young people crowd a doner kebab stand and older locals chat over tea and coffee; inside, stalls sell all manner of clothing, kitchenware and trinkets, and food sellers display their produce. There are artisanal cheeses, many known simply as ‘white cheese’ (peynir), and sometimes named for their place of origin or way they are made; they could be young and sweet or aged and tangy. One, yörük, from the western Taurus Mountains, is brined, like feta, or made ‘tulum-style’, where the curds are left to drain, then salted, wrapped and stored for up to a year. Others are flavoured with wild herbs; the best are made in spring from sheep’s milk and ripened for three to six months.

A beekeeper sells a pale, mountain-flower honey from the high meadows, where bees are bigger and stronger; pine honey and pollen too, and plump dried figs. Nearby, a lady sells mahogany- brown, dried carob beans, tarhana, barley, bulgur and adacayi, or mountain sage, for tea; another, syrupy, nut-filled pastries from large trays of baklava, and kadayif made with shredded filo dough. Table olives beckon – black, cylindrical Gemlik; large, plump Ayvalik; salt-cured black olives; young, green olives in brine – and sugary towers of lokum, aka Turkish delight, next to decorative heaps of sunflower seeds, almonds, hazelnuts, pistachios and walnuts. Formidable stacks of vegetables and leaf greens – cabbages, onions, fresh beans, tomatoes, aubergines, purslane, samphire – and fruits – figs, peaches, melons, pink-gold pomegranates, watermelons – are piled high in the centre and spill over the narrow paths leading to a makeshift, open-air café where four ladies are making gözleme flatbreads to order.

When Ramazan Kavcar’s grandfather bought a water mill in the foothills above Kalkan, there were 17 of them; now there’s only one. ‘We added a restaurant and outdoor trout tank to the sesame-seed mill when electricity arrived here in the Eighties,’ Ramazan, the youngest of seven children, explains. ‘Kalkan is a 20-minute drive now, but when we were kids, we had to walk 6km down a shepherd’s path. Sesame grows in the hillside fields and villagers bring their crop to the mill for grinding, as well as their corn and barley now.’ Corn bread is a speciality of the area; barley bread is a traditional local taste. Milled sesame seeds transform into nutrient-rich tahini, which is much in demand for a dip or a sauce and to flavour bread, cakes and cookies; while the pressed seeds make oil. Graceful maple trees surround the nearby spring and flowering vines shade the restaurant’s large wooden deck overlooking a verdant valley descending towards the sparkling sea. ‘This is a place to enjoy the moment,’ enjoins Ramazan. ‘It’s less humid and cooler than on the coast. Take your time with a few mezes, raki [a local, distilled liquor] and our trout.’

For centuries, local people have moved from their hot coastal settlements to the mountains for the summer, where they practise animal husbandry – goats and sheep – and hunt rabbits and other small game, preserving the meat for winter. Along the twisting mountain road that leads to these high pastures, Mediterranean scrub gives way to pines, with the occasional clearing, home to clusters of beehives or stone shepherd huts. Clumps of chestnut and almond trees hint at nearby smallholdings, as do olive trees on the rocky hillsides. Beneath a magnificent carob tree, a few men sit drinking tea from small, tulip-shaped glasses. Tea was planted in the cool, humid Black Sea area a century ago, since coffee, an import, had become expensive and the new-born Turkish Republic needed to be self-sufficient.

Climbing higher, the scenery subtly changes to juniper, mountain meadow and different pines that are more suited to cold winters. The road enters a huge plateau, surrounded by 2,500m-high peaks that are often snow-covered year-round. Trucks carry lumber to the mills, poplar trees line the road and the fertile soil supports fields of wheat, corn and melons. There are pocket-sized orchards of quince, apples, cherries and plums; and mulberry trees, whose ripe fruits make a delectable syrup and young leaves are rolled up and filled to make sarma, shade small home courtyards. A moped-riding street seller passes, hauling a large panier of halka tatlisi dough balls behind him; all around, the domed roofs of village mosques sparkle in the sun.

Across the plateau, close to the small once-Ottoman town of Elmali, Burak Özkan, co-owner of Likya Winery, explains why he plants vines here. ‘There’s a 4,000-year-old burial chamber nearby with a mural depicting grapes and people drinking wine. Nature makes the wine and this terroir is ideal. We’re just over 1,000m high; we have snowy winters and 40-degree summers with little rain and cool nights. Our mountain air is made even cleaner by the many cedar trees around us,’ says Burak.

The extensive vineyard is a family affair. ‘My hobby is grafting roots of ancient varietals and making wines from their grapes,’ he continues. ‘I think it’s important for future generations. The government holds a collection of over 1,000 varietals but here, in the land of ancient Lycia, there are different grapes. An old shepherd brought a vine root to us 21 years ago and now the spicy wine from that black acikara grape is well known. And we found the fersun grape two hours from here. I tasted it, liked it and brought it to the winery. We also grow merzifon karasi, a red-wine grape with an ancient pedigree from the Black Sea area. We notice where each grape thrives and grow the vines in that spot.’

At the restaurant tables, these unique varietals are matched with semi-hard eski kasar and white, crumbly pelin peyniri cheeses, pastirma air-dried meat and dishes like köfte (lamb patties), kokoreç (lamb sweetbreads) and slow-cooked keşkek stew.

The Lycians, believing the after-life to be as important as the present one, built house-like sarcophagi for their departed and a remarkable example, the King’s Tomb, lies at the upper end of Uzun Çarşi, a pretty, cobbled street in the historic Old Town of Kaş. Close by, bougainvillea and jasmine cascade over the wooden balconies of Ottoman-era houses and shops sell antique carpets, hand-crafted leather goods and silver jewellery. Below, the minaret of the mosque on Republic (or Town) Square dominates a small, attractive harbour filled with moored yachts and wooden gulet fishing boats. In the evening, the muezzin’s call to prayer echoes around the large, handsome, paved square, where families and friends chat, children play and Naci Durmuş sells iced almonds from his glass-covered cart, just as he has for 40 years. These moreish nuts are picked when the shells are still soft and put straight on ice. Nearby, Zeynap Yilmaz does a brisk trade selling plump, juicy mydia dolmas (rice-stuffed mussels).

On her restaurant terrace overlooking the square, Simge Manacioğlu, owner of Mezetaryen wine and meze bar, remarks that she is on a gastronomic mission. ‘I love mezes: they are a wonderful way to enjoy and share our foods, tastes and delicacies,’ she says. ‘They allow me to be imaginative too and use more unusual, sustainable, foods like lionfish – an invasive fish from the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea. Also, cured leerfish, or akya, which is rarely found on menus as it’s caught by anglers; foraged solinya (razor shells); and sardalya (sardines preserved in rock salt).

‘We make börek [small meat-, vegetable- or cheese-filled pies] too, and pickles, olives, nuts and local cheeses give the meze variety, as do dips of tahini, aubergine, tangy yogurt and beetroot,’ she adds. Simge, a native of Istanbul, has an MA in Design. But, like other young, female chefs here, she changed course, studied the culinary arts and is now producing delicious food in her restaurant. ‘I want people to know that our Turkish cuisine is far bigger than kebab.’ From the sheer variety produced just in this small corner of the vast country, that much is clear.