With its resurgent food culture and down-to-earth hospitality, the countryside of this small Balkan nation serves up one of Europe’s most beguiling escapes.

Photographs by Jessica Jungbauer

Outdoor dining with a view at the Bujtina Mbi Kanion guesthouse in Nivica.

Waking up in southern Albania’s beautifully remote Zagoria Valley, we’re greeted by Mira Muka in the garden of her guesthouse, Bujtina Peshtan. “Breakfast is ready,” she smiles, gesturing toward a table under a towering walnut tree, where a spread of local cheeses, homemade pickles, fist-size tomatoes, and dewy slices of melon awaits. Muka proudly informs us that she makes her own raki—a strong fruit-based spirit popular across the Balkans—as well as olive oil, a staple of Albanian cooking. Everything else in her kitchen comes from her neighbors in the quiet mountainside village of Peshtan, where cows graze freely next to children playing football.

Bujtina Peshtan is among a growing number of agroturizme—family-owned farms or rural guesthouses—to open in Albania, offering homey accommodation and a taste of the countryside. Not far from us is the course of the Vjosa River, whose turquoise waters flow past farmland, orchards, and steep forests of fir and oak before meeting the Adriatic Sea. For my husband and me, a food journalist and photographer duo here to eat our way through the Albanian hinterland, it’s a natural starting point for a week marked by farm-to-table meals and genuine hospitality.

Sandwiched between Greece to the south and Montenegro to the north, this once-reclusive Balkan nation is often hailed as one of Europe’s last unspoiled places. Long gone are the dark days of communism and the infamously paranoid dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, who ruled for 41 years until his death in 1985. Now a burgeoning democracy, Albania has put the traumas of the 20th century behind it and reshaped its narrative, emerging along the way as the fastest-growing travel destination in the region.

The attractions are many: a picturesque Mediterranean coastline, trail-laced mountain ranges, overlooked villages, and ancient heritage sites, all in a country smaller than Belgium. In 2024, there were more than 11 million visitors—five times the population of Albania itself. And with that influx, people like Muka have embraced slow tourism as a way to welcome guests while preserving Albania’s authentic character.

Cuisine is central to that identity. With Greece on its doorstep and Italy just 70 kilometers across the Adriatic Sea, Albania takes culinary cues from its Mediterranean neighbors as well as its own fertile lowlands and foothills. Okra, pumpkin, beans, and other legumes figure prominently on the Albanian table, as do fruits like fig, persimmon, and pomegranate—ingredients that contribute to a vibrant, flavorful cuisine that goes far beyond the stereotype of grilled meats. A strong Turkish influence also lingers from more than four centuries of Ottoman rule. It is a legacy that can be tasted in ubiquitous qofte meatballs and traditional drinks like boza, a fermented millet beverage.

In the afternoon, Muka teaches us how to prepare byrek, a traditional savory pastry similar to Turkish börek that’s a staple on every table in Albania. For the filling, there’s pickled wild herbs, which she forages herself. She scoops the glistening herbs onto paper-thin layers of phyllo dough, then adds more phyllo and repeats the process until the pan is filled to the brim. After carefully tucking in the sides, she bathes everything in olive oil and leaves it to bake over an open fire.

At dinner, we share a table in the garden with another couple. Aside from the flaky byrek, there are peppers stuffed with a hearty mixture of rice, ground beef, oregano, and thyme. For dessert, Muka serves her specialty: qumështor, a custard-like Albanian milk pie that is dense but not too rich, complementing the homey feel of the evening.

Byrek at Mrizi i Zanave; rural scenery in the Nivica region of southern Albania. — *Left to right: Byrek* at Mrizi i Zanave; rural scenery in the Nivica region of southern Albania.

A gaggle of honking geese marches past as the baker pulls rounds of spinach-filled bread from an outdoor oven. “This is pogaçe, just like our grandmother used to make,” says Anton Prenga, one of the two brothers behind Mrizi i Zanave Agroturizëm in the village of Fishtë, some four hours by car north of Peshtan.

Credited with launching Albania’s Slow Food foundation, the Prengas have done wonders with their family’s farm, adding a winery, a restaurant, and a nine-room inn converted from their grandfather’s old stone farmhouse. A concrete bunker built during the Cold War now serves as a produce shop, its shelves groaning with fruit and vegetables from the fields. When Prenga leads me down the lane to a group of low brick buildings, a sign reading FORMER PRISON OF FISHTË stops me in my tracks. My host confirms that in the Hoxha era they were used as cells for political prisoners. The site has since been transformed into a production facility, turning out cheeses and jams, charcuterie, and other artisanal foods.

“Communism left a strong mark on this country,” Prenga says. “Back then, it was forbidden to keep your own animals. You weren’t allowed to grow your own food. You had to work for the land you were allotted, get a bit of money for it, and then buy what was on offer in the state-run store.”

Two women are busy making gjizë, Albania’s answer to ricotta, while cow’s and goat’s milk cheeses mature in oak barrels next door. The shelves in another room are stacked with jars of preserves: watermelon, green fig, quince, chestnut, and kimça, a fruit similar to plum but sweeter. Outside in the courtyard near a gnarled olive tree, big jars filled with pine cones and sugar sit simmering in the hot summer sun. “They will stay out here for two months to make pine-cone syrup. It’s an Albanian tradition!” Prenga says.

He and his brother, Altin, both trained as chefs in Italy before returning to their homeland in 2006, determined to help revive culinary and agricultural traditions that had been stifled by half a century of political oppression. Whatever Mrizi i Zanave can’t produce on-site, it buys from small farmers in the area.

The fruit of their efforts is on full display at dinner, served meze fashion under the restaurant’s thick timber roof beams. Our bread basket overflows with oven-warm byrek, pogaçe, and bukë misri, a golden cornbread beloved for its crisp chewiness. There’s a leafy salad sprinkled with walnuts and berries, and traditional jufka pasta with foraged mushrooms; thyme-spiked goat shank and still-sizzling lamb skewers. Somehow, we manage to save room for dessert: a contemporary take on the classic Albanian rice pudding sultjash. Here, they have turned it into ice cream, drizzled with the sweet-sour pine syrup we saw stewing in the sun earlier.

*Left to right:* Harvesting produce at Uka Farm; ice cream with blackberries and pine-cone syrup at Mrizi i Zanave.

Tomatoes and deep-fried zucchini flowers filled with ricotta at Mrizi i Zanave; a batch of pogaçe, straight from the oven at the same establishment. — *Left to right:* Tomatoes and deep-fried zucchini flowers filled with ricotta at Mrizi i Zanave; a batch of *pogaçe*, straight from the oven at the same establishment.

Reluctant as we are to leave the countryside, we can’t forgo a visit to Mullixhiu—a culinary beacon situated in the heart of Tirana, Albania’s bustling capital.

Like the Prengas and so many of their peers, chef-owner Bledar Kola trained overseas—most notably at Copenhagen’s Noma—before coming back to his home country. Today, he is one of the most popular chefs in Albania, reinventing traditional dishes with a modern twist while honoring their heritage. When he opened Mullixhiu in 2016, just off the city’s leafy Grand Park, the restaurant changed the way both visitors and locals viewed Albanian food.

Evoking a mountain chalet, the pine-clad dining room is decorated with antique farm tools and flower-draped lampshades. In another room, old milling machines nod to the restaurant’s name—mullixhiu means “miller” in Albanian—while sheets of jufka and petka pasta hang from wooden slats to dry.

Mullixhiu sources its ingredients from small farmers and producers throughout the country, informing a seasonal menu that might include quail in plum sauce or veal brain with pickled cabbage. For lunch, we order trahana, a hearty soup made from fermented grains, typically eaten for breakfast in rural areas. Here, though, it’s reimagined as a savory dish, topped with spinach sauce and grapes. Then there’s fli. This treasured Albanian-Kosovar specialty is made from soft sheets of dough, folded with rich double cream and butter, and cooked the traditional way under a saç—a heavy iron dome covered in glowing coals. Fli is customarily reserved for social gatherings due to the elaborate preparation required, so we’re pleasantly surprised to find it at Mullixhiu, where it’s served in small squares accompa- nied by a reduction of olive-leaf tea. For dessert, we opt for the qumështor milk pie. It has a gooier texture and a more deeply browned top than the one we tried at Bujtina Peshtan, yet it tastes just as comforting.

On the outskirts of Tirana, Uka Farm grows all manner of fruits and vegetables for the dishes served at its restaurant.

After braving the chaos of Tirana’s evening traffic, arriving at Uka Farm on the outskirts of the city feels like stumbling upon an oasis. Beyond its monumental concrete gate, the sweet scent of magnolia wafts through the air, and the temperature feels cooler. The two-hectare enclave of grape vines and vegetable plots is home to one of Albania’s most popular farm-to-table restaurants, founded by former agriculture minister Rexhep Uka. His son, Flori Uka, is the country’s best-known winemaker.

“We follow permaculture principles for the farm and the vineyard,” the younger Uka explains on a tour before dinner, guiding us past pumpkin patches and tomato plants shaded by sinuous cypress trees. “There are around 250 different plants here, some of which we plant specifically, the rest we let grow naturally.”

After studying oenology in Italy, he too decided to move back home to Albania, where he “fell in love” with the ancient grape varieties that thrive in these sunny climes. Uka specializes in kallmet and ceruja, working with 250 families across the country to harvest the grapes.

Pouring glass after glass for us to taste, he says, “We are one of the oldest wine-growing regions in the Balkans, with a 6,000-year-old wine culture dating back to Neolithic times.” So why is Albanian wine so unknown? “For centuries under the rule of the Ottoman Turks, wine growing was mostly prohibited,” Uka explains. “Then came the World Wars, communism, dictatorship … only in the last few decades has production really picked up.”

With a pleasant view of the vineyard and the sound of crickets all around, we sit down for dinner—again served meze style—at a table dressed in plaid linen. From the first forkful, the fresh flavors make it clear the ingredients have traveled less than a hundred meters. There are pickled cucumbers and smoked eggplant puree, cornbread bathed in piquant yogurt, byrek stuffed with gjizë cheese, fried peppers in white-wine sauce, and oven-roasted lamb and goat with potatoes.

“Albanian cuisine originated in the homes of the farming families in the northern mountains,” Uka tells us later over a digestif of housemade grape raki. “These weren’t wealthy people, but when guests knocked on their door, it was customary to invite them in for a good meal. Hospitality—we call it mikpritja—is Albania’s strongest weapon.”

*Left to right:* Elona Bejo in the garden of Ferma Albanik; sun-drying tomatoes at Uka Farm.

Four hours south of Tirana, we bump along a gravel road in the bucolic Deshnica Valley, careful to avoid hitting the goats that saunter heedlessly across our path. The lane eventually peters out at Ferma Albanik, a female-run agroturizëm with three cozy guest bedrooms and its own permaculture garden.

Together with her mother Mira and sister Elma, Elona Bejo moved to her grandparents’ property after attaining a degree in architecture in Tirana. “The ground floor of this house used to be an agricultural depot where vegetables and fruit were stored during the communist era,” she explains as she shows us around the lovingly restored stone and timber structure. The surrounding fields and orchards were abandoned with the end of forced collectivization in the early 1990s, so the Bejos work with local women producers and harvest wild fruits to make syrup and jam. They call it a “modern cooperative.”

More than that, Ferma Albanik is collaborating with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to preserve ancient Albanian seed stocks, mostly eggplant, corn, tomatoes, and beans like laroshë, a mottled legume native to these mountains. They also host school trips to teach kids about their country’s heritage produce.

At dinner time, we find ourselves at a big communal table with some other travelers. First up is okra soup. Then comes a salad featuring five different types of lettuce from the garden, followed by a byrek filled with zucchini. Soon, we’re all scrambling over a plate of tender, crispy meatballs. “My mother’s secret recipe,” Bejo says. “She coats them with dried breadcrumbs.”

The next day, the final leg of our journey brings us across Albania’s southwestern highlands to the Nivica region. Traversing the Kurvelesh Plateau, we drive past sleepy stone villages and the occasional donkey or cow—and that’s about it. This area is still largely undiscovered by travelers, and the newly paved road from the coast to Bujtina Mbi Kanion, our lodgings for the night, doesn’t even show up on the usual map services. Spoken English is a rarity.

The guesthouse is owned by a woman named Dyshe Merjo. We communicate only with gestures, but our smiles say plenty. Still, at dinner that night, we’re glad to have the assistance of an Albanian kid at the next table who’s learning English at school. He orders the house specialty for us: lamb cooked in the oven with potatoes.

The next morning, we’re offered some raki at breakfast, but we politely decline. Instead, we sink our teeth into some of Merjo’s freshly made petulla—deep-fried doughnuts served piping hot with a little honey and some salty feta-like cheese. Seductively oily and perfectly crispy, it’s all we can do not to devour the entire plate in seconds. Add to that the morning sun streaming onto the open terrace, the soothing silence of the mountains, and the yawning limestone cliffs of Nivica Canyon stretching out before us, and we’re already dreaming of the day we come back.

Mira Bejo prepping a meal in the kitchen at Ferma Albanik; traditional Albanian jufka pasta with mushrooms at Mrizi i Zanave. — *Left to right:* Mira Bejo prepping a meal in the kitchen at Ferma Albanik; traditional Albanian *jufka* pasta with mushrooms at Mrizi i Zanave.

Finding the Flavor of Albania

GETTING THERE

An easy hop from its Balkan neighbors, Albania is best reached from Singapore or Hong Kong on Turkish Airlines, which code shares the route’s Istanbul–Tirana leg with Air Albania.

WHERE TO EAT AND STAY

Bujtina Mbi Kanion
A rural guesthouse in the lesser-visited Nivica region with knockout canyon views (US$75 a night, half-board).

Bujtina Peshtan
Farm-to-table dining is just one of the highlights of this cozy retreat in southern Albania’s Zagoria Valley (from US$45 a night).

Ferma Albanik
The guesthouse at this women-run agroturizëm has three family-size rooms with wood-burning stoves and balconies, with meals served in a converted stone barn (from US$60 a night).

Mrizi i Zanave Agroturizëm
Overnighting guests at this pioneering agrotourism estate in northwestern Albania sleep in a stylishly restored stone farmhouse (from US$75 a night).

Mullixhiu
Chef Bledar Kolas’ acclaimed park-side restaurant in Tirana turns Albanian country fare into a gourmet event.

Uka Farm
On the outskirts of Tirana, Uka Farm stands out for both its boutique winery (which showcases endemic Albanian grape varieties) and popular farm-to-table restaurant.

Xheko Imperial Luxury Hotel
For stays in Tirana, the Xheko Imperial is hard to beat, with 72 individually decorated rooms, a hammam-equipped spa, and a prime location in the buzzy Blloku area (from US$140 a night).

This article originally appeared in the August/September 2025 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“An Appetite for Albania”). Buy a single issue or subscribe here.

A Tantalizing Taste of Albania’s Unique Heritage Cuisine