The dish this region is known for is testi kebabı: beef or lamb with onion, pepper and tomato sealed into a clay pot, baked for hours in a wood oven, then carried out and cracked open at the neck with the back of a knife. The pots are thrown in Avanos from red Kızılırmak clay and broken once, not reused. Dinner itself is often underground, in rooms cut into the tuff around Göreme and Ürgüp.

Breakfast is the other long meal: a table of small dishes at once, white cheese, olives, tomato and cucumber, honey with kaymak, menemen cooked with tomato and pepper, black tea in tulip glasses, served on a terrace or on cushions in a valley. The cellars around Ürgüp work Emir, the white grape this plateau is identified with, and Öküzgözü from eastern Anatolia; the harvest runs through September and October. A Turkish Night serves that food alongside folk dance, belly dance and a whirling dervish segment.

Testi kebabı bakes slowly, so ask whether the pot needs ordering a day ahead. Turkish Night evenings last three to three and a half hours and usually include hotel pickup; some tickets cover unlimited local drinks, others bill them separately. A valley breakfast takes around two and a half hours and starts early, before the day heats up. Full-day Red and Green tours run seven to eight hours with a lunch stop, often beside the stream in the Ihlara Valley; confirm whether that meal is included, and say in advance if anyone is vegetarian or avoids alcohol.