Tabriz cooks in Azerbaijani Turkish, not Persian: sour plums instead of lime, dill instead of saffron, and a kufteh meatball the size of a football. Three days of bazaar spice rows, charcoal kebab houses, qurabiya bakeries and mountain teahouses.
Enter the UNESCO bazaar at the Amir gold section and cut into the spice and dried-fruit timchehs. Sumac, dried barberries (zereshk), Tabriz saffron and sour-plum paste sold from open sacks. Open 09:00–19:00, closed Friday.
Lunch-only dizi/abgousht served in stone crocks: lamb shank, chickpeas and white beans stewed for hours. You pour off the broth, mash the solids with a wooden gousht-koub, and eat with sangak bread and raw onion.
Tabriz's pastry street. Qurabiya (crumbling almond-butter cookie), eris (walnut-rosewater nougat) and lovuz cut into diamonds. Shops box mixed kilos for travel and vacuum-seal on request. Open until 21:00.
A vaulted caravanserai courtyard inside the bazaar turned teahouse. Black tea poured from samovars into armoudu pear-glasses, taken with hard nabat sugar crystals and gaz nougat. Qalyan available in the side rooms.
The city's signature dish: a grapefruit-to-football-sized meatball of minced lamb, rice and yellow split peas stuffed with a whole egg, walnuts, prunes and barberries, simmered in turmeric-tomato broth and cut open at the table.
Watch flat sangak dough slapped onto a sloping bed of hot river pebbles, and paper-thin lavash pulled from tandoor walls. Queues form at 07:00 and again 16:00–19:00. Bread is state-subsidised and absurdly cheap.
The bazaar's dairy lane: Azerbaijani sheep-milk cheeses aged in skins, thick sour kashk in jars, and Sahand mountain honey still in the comb. Vendors cut tasting slices from wheels on request.
Tabriz's modern dining quarter, north of El-Goli. Kebab koobideh, barg and bonab-style long lamb skewers grilled over charcoal, served with grilled tomato, sumac and buttered saffron rice. Kitchens run past 23:00.
Tabriz breakfast at its most serious: halim (slow-pounded wheat and lamb porridge, dusted with cinnamon and sugar) and kaleh pacheh (sheep's head and trotter broth). Stalls open 05:00 and close when the pot empties, around 10:30.
Street cauldrons of ash-e doogh — a hot yoghurt soup with chickpeas, herbs and mint-fried oil, served in paper bowls with doogh, the salted sour yoghurt drink carbonated in the Azerbaijani style.
Bastani sonnati — stretchy saffron-rosewater ice cream studded with frozen cream slabs and pistachio — served pressed between wafers, or paired with faloodeh, frozen rice-starch noodles doused in lime.
Families haul samovars, watermelon and grilled corn up the northern ridge above Tabriz for evening picnics. Hilltop teahouses sell tea, corn on the cob and doogh while the city lights come on below.