We were very excited to recently introduce our Almaty Culinary Discovery Tour.
So in honor of this, here’s a list of our favorite spots to eat and drink in Almaty!
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Giginova Georgian Restaurant
If Georgian isn’t your favorite cuisine, then you obviously haven’t had it before. There are a few Georgian restaurants in Almaty, but this is the only one where every Sunday you can attend a cooking class, run by the eccentric and lovable owner, Gigi. For a couple of hours, the small restaurant becomes a teaching kitchen, then as they’re cooking whatever you’ve concocted, they’ll flip it all back just in time for you to sit down and enjoy your hard work.
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Aul Resort
30km from the city centre, Aul Resort is a great place to experience all the good parts of traditional Kazakh life, whilst still enjoying our modern comforts. If you stay there, your room is in fact a yurt – but one with a comfortable bed, air conditioning and heating, cable tv, and of course a private bathroom. There is a spa centre with various pools, saunas and opportunities for massage, and in summer 2018, they’re opening a brand new water park! But if sweating out toxins or throwing yourself down a water slide isn’t your idea of fun, you can go fishing, horse riding or hiking.
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Barstol and Kok
Actually a Swedish chain, this place has amazing modern cuisine, a really cool Scandinavian vibe, great shisha and an awesome selection of beers. It’s not the kind of place you’d expect to find in post-Soviet Central Asia, but that’s exactly why we like it. And if you’re there on the weekend, you’ll get to hear one of the better live cover bands in the city.
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Na Kirova
Cheap beer and shashlyk. One of the simplest restaurants in Almaty, this is the perfect place to go to experience real local living, especially in summer when the courtyard’s heaving with families, couples and groups of friends until well into the wee hours of the morning. The only thing on the menu is shashlyk, so if you’re vegetarian, this isn’t the place for you, and for drinks there’s just a couple of cheap local beers – well there very well might be some other options, but we’ve never paid attention to them!
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Vechnoe Nebo
Located on the ground floor of a brightly painted Soviet apartment building, the name of this restaurant means “Eternal Sky”, and has a live traditional dance show every night. They serve a huge variety of local cuisine, from Russian delicacies including holodets, a meat jelly, to Kazakhstan’s national dish, beshbarmak, which consists of pasta, vegetables, and two or three types of horse meat. What we love about it though, is not only is it local food done really well with great quality ingredients (not a given in this part of the world!), but they even put some experimental fusion twists on local classics, such as the warm horse meat salad with a Thai style dressing.
Want to discover these delights for yourself?
Join us for our inaugural Almaty Culinary Discovery Tour this year!
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