Savor the Experience Tours

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Food & wine focused boutique and custom tours to Central and Eastern Europe

Savor tours don’t merely scratch the surface but delve deep and provide an enriching, authentic experience. Each tour is designed to be more than just a chance to savor delicious fresh, organic and local culinary delights. We want to give you a special opportunity to make a real connection with local people and their many traditions To sit down, talk with and learn from a myriad of friendly local producers, wine makers and chefs in their cellars, houses, kitchens and gardens. If you are looking for a 5-course lunch without busloads of tourists, wanting to sample a dozen kinds of goat cheese, go hunting for truffles with dogs, hang out with boutique wine makers in their cellars and meet the people who’ve been making honey, wines and prosciutto for generations then these tours are for you.

10/04/2024

There are so many new and exotic destinations we are offering for 2025. Sarah’s leading Indonesia and Korea - and both look amazing. I will be taking guests to Central Asia, Georgia and more. Check out the new tour schedule this Thursday!

25/04/2022

You may have had Turkish coffee before but have you it had made 'on the sand'? This is a technique I first witnessed in western Ukraine at a cafe run by Tatars, who share both linguistic and cultural ties to Turks.

19/04/2022

Scrumptious, epic, sensory-overload, yummy! Our Istanbul food walk with Leyla across two continents is going to be amazing. And this is just a fraction of what we'll be tasting.

Spots still open for our SE Turkey tour, Sep 22nd - Oct 2nd.

14/04/2022

What's for breakfast in Izmir? Chicken of course, duh! Well, sort of...

It's called Tavuk göğsü. And it is quite a mouthful. Don't ask me how to pronounce it - that's why we have Taylan, our trusted local, to do the heavy lifting 😅

As featured on our Coastal Turkey tour running October 2nd-12th. TWO SPOTS STILL LEFT !!

13/04/2022

We just had two spots open up on our Southeastern Turkey tour, running Sep 22nd to Oct 2nd this year. Looking for a couple or two friends sharing a room to fill this opening. Message me if you are interested. $3200 pp

About the tour --
While culinary delights are the priority on this tour, what makes this area so interesting are the many different current cultures (Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic, Christian Arabic) and cultures from the past (Hittite, Roman, Persian, Seljuk, early Christian). The tradition of crafts plays a big part here as well whether it’s filigree jewelers, coppersmiths and silk makers or crafts with a more culinary connection like butchers and baklava makers. Between tastings, demonstrations, some amazing restaurants, home cooked meals with families, a few wineries (this is not Slovenia when it comes to wine) and just eating as we go walking through bazaars and shops, no one is going to leave with an empty stomach - that is for sure!

25/11/2021

𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗰𝗵/𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗸𝘆𝗮 𝗯𝗮𝘇𝗮𝗮𝗿
𝗦𝗘 𝗧𝘂𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵, 𝗝𝘂𝗹𝘆

The start to my southeast Turkey research hit a bit of a snag when I caught a 24 hr bug. And with a lot of ground (or plates of food) to cover after being out of commission for a day, the only way to right the ship was to eat myself one hell of a breakfast before we had to depart Antakya.

At the indoor bazaar, these types of kebab shops are a combo of butchery and cafe. You can watch them chop up meat for a kebab and the one we choose, as it is special to the Hatay region, is a Tepsi kebab. Tepsi is the Turkish word for “tray” and that’s what they cook it it after spreading out the meat in what looks to be a pizza-style dish. They top it with big wedges of tomato, pepper and onion. Then it gets baked in a wood-fired oven before appearing at your table piping hot and oozing juices. I wasn’t sure if my stomach was ready for this but with that aroma and it still sizzling on the plate, there was no way I wasn’t going to just dive right in. And after inhaling my first Tepsi, I’d say I was back to 100%.

Next up was hunt for Antioch’s best humus and to try out something called Bakla, a puree of broad beans (cooked over fire first for 14 hours!), garlic, tahini and parsley. We found Zeydi a few stalls down in the bazaar. I got to watch him literally ‘whip up’ these two trademark mezze at lightning speed. The business sign over the shop says “Usta”, which means someone who mastered a skill. And he definitely mastered that humus making skill. It was so smooth, so light, so flavorful. And still to this day, four months after my humus enlightenment with Zeydi, it is pretty damn hard for me to excited to eat this dish anywhere else.

24/11/2021

𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘀𝗶𝘅-𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘂 𝗮𝘁 Lokanda Devetak 1870
𝗙𝗹𝗮𝘃𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗮 𝗧𝗼𝘂𝗿, 𝗦𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿

Along the Slovenia-Italy border you have regions that are the same but with two different names. There’s Goriska Brda in Slovenia which is called Collio in Italy. Closer to Trieste you have Carso on Italian side and Kras on the Slovenian side. But besides having a mix of two nationalities on either side of the border, there are also historic ties to the Habsburg empire when this area was neither Italy nor Slovenia. And when I first discovered Lokanda Devetak 1870 a few years back (located in Italy’s Carso region), they explained that they don’t consider their recipes to be Slovene nor Italian but to be Habsburg cuisine. However you classify their kitchen, my dinner at their place back in 2018 was divine. But between the pandemic and never having enough time to put all my favorite eateries into tour itineraries, I had yet to bring a group here. Until this autumn.

What I appreciate about Devetak is that they offer browsable seasonal menus and have an ordering option that is really the best way to go for these types of establishments. Between starters, warm courses, main courses and deserts you have nearly 25 different choices so you pick a multi-course meal by choosing the six things you want to try. This allows groups to write their own menus in advance. Honestly, there was no meal on this tour I was looking forward to more than this one. But as a completely unexpected bonus, they printed out the menu (with our very own Savor logo on it) and every guest had a copy of it waiting for them when they sat down at the table. They even include a poem, written on the back of the menu, espousing the magic of their cosy homestead. Brilliant! And on top of all this, they managed to work in wine pairings with many of the wines we were not able to try anywhere else on our tour. Wow!

What’s on the menu:
--Goat cheese from Cividale (the little town where we take guests for their first ‘frico’ experience)
--Local cured meats
--Gnocchi with rabbit stew and wild fennel
--Fusi pasta with special recipe sausages and a Carso cheese matured in a 80m deep cave
--Wild boar with plums, cinnamon and Terrano wine
--Parfait made from regional honey with almond and chocolate crumble

Wines included:
--Cab Franc from Venezia Giulia
--Schioppenttino from Friuli
--Vitovska from Carso

23/11/2021

𝗛𝗼𝗺𝗲-𝗰𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝘇𝗲𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝘆𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 Alma
𝗕𝗲𝗰𝗸𝘆’𝘀 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝗳 𝗗𝗮𝗹𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗮/𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗮𝗻𝘀 (𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝘂𝗿), 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲

Two things that always stand out on a tour, home cooked meal and being invited over to a local’s home. Add in a guest’s birthday to celebrate and you have the makings of a great day! Our local guide in Herzegovina, Alma, and her husband Ermin prepared a feast us. They even had some home-made rakija and fresh chili peppers and home-made hot sauces. All we had to bring was our appetite and a few bottles of Domano Pjenušac, a sparkling wine from Bosnian Žilavka grape.

What's on the menu:
Focaccia with olives and tomatoes
Sarma [grape leaves, rice, spring onion and mint]
Đuveč [Balkan ratatouille]
Oven-roasted lamb with herbs
Hurmašice [syrup-drenched pastries]

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http://www.savortheexperiencetours.com/

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