Trabzon Food and Culture: Hamsi Anchovy Cuisine, the Black Sea Pide, Muhlama Cheese Fondue, the Horon Sword Dance, Black Sea Tea Culture, and the Rize Tea Plantation Day Trip
The Trabzon food and culture route covers the hamsi anchovy as the defining ingredient of Black Sea cuisine, the Trabzon pide flat bread with the anchovy topping, the muhlama melted cheese fondue with the cornbread, the horon sword dance tradition, the Black Sea teahouse culture, and the Rize tea plantation landscape.
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Hamsi: The Black Sea Anchovy Culture
The hamsi anchovy, the small silver fish that swarms in the Black Sea in the winter months from November to February and that the Trabzon cuisine has elevated to the most versatile single ingredient in any regional Turkish food tradition, is prepared in the Black Sea region as the main course, the side dish, the soup, the pastry filling, the rice dish, and even the bread and the dessert in the most creative single-ingredient cooking tradition in Turkey. The hamsi season transforms the Trabzon restaurants and the fish markets into the most animated food markets on the Turkish Black Sea coast.
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Trabzon Pide: The Black Sea Flat Bread
The Trabzon pide, the Black Sea variation of the Turkish flat bread that differs from the Anatolian pide in its thicker crust, the oval boat shape, and the topping of the hamsi anchovy, the sucuk sausage, or the egg with the cheese, baked in the wood-fired stone oven and served directly from the oven to the table in the most time-critical Turkish food service, is the most distinctive single bakery product of the Black Sea region and the food that the returning Trabzon resident most misses when away from the Black Sea coast.
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Muhlama: The Melted Cheese Fondue
Muhlama, the Black Sea cheese fondue of the local butter, the cornmeal, and the tulum cheese melted together in the copper pan until the stringy cheese forms the most elastic single hot food in Turkish cuisine, served with the Black Sea cornbread (ekmek) for dipping and the hot Black Sea tea for washing down, is the most intensely caloric and the most distinctively regional food in the Trabzon area and the dish that most completely represents the Black Sea mountain food culture where the cattle herding, the dairy production, and the cornmeal cuisine overlap.
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Horon: The Black Sea Sword Dance
The horon, the collective sword dance of the Black Sea Pontic Greeks and the Turkish Black Sea communities that involves the chain of linked dancers in the semi-circle performing the synchronized stamping and shaking movements with the held swords or daggers to the kemençe bowed fiddle music, is the most distinctive regional folk dance in Turkey and the one that most directly expresses the warrior-pastoral character of the Pontic mountain community. The horon is performed at the Black Sea weddings, the village festivals, and the Trabzonspor football victory celebrations.
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Black Sea Tea Culture: The Rize Glass Tradition
The Black Sea tea, produced exclusively in the Rize province on the steep mountain slopes between the Pontic mountains and the Black Sea coast in the most climatically specific agricultural zone in Turkey, is the primary hot beverage in Turkey consumed at 3.5 kilograms per capita annually and the social lubricant of the teahouse culture that organizes the daily life of the Black Sea male community. The Rize tea in the small waisted tulip glass, served in the teahouses that open at 5am for the fishermen and the market workers, is the most regionally specific single beverage tradition in Turkey.
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Rize: The Tea Capital Day Trip
Rize, 70 kilometers east of Trabzon on the Black Sea coast, is the center of the Turkish tea industry with the tea research institute, the tea cooperative, and the most photogenic single agricultural landscape in Turkey in the form of the terraced tea plantation slopes descending from the mountain to the Black Sea shore. The Rize tea plantation walk from the town, the tea factory visit, and the tea tasting at the plantation teahouse is the most complete single agricultural heritage experience on the Turkish Black Sea coast.