Yazd Persian Sweets and Traditional Cuisine
Taste the distinctive cuisine of Yazd where the city is famous throughout Iran for its exceptional sweets — especially qottab, baqlava, and pashmak cotton candy — and the traditional Persian dishes that reflect the city's position at the crossroads of Silk Road trade routes.
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Haj Khalifeh Ali Rahbar Confectionery
Visit the most famous confectionery in Yazd where the traditional sweets that have made this city Iran's confectionery capital are produced and sold — the crescent-shaped qottab filled with walnut and cardamom, the almond-filled baqlava, and the delicate pashmak cotton candy woven from sugar and sesame flour.
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Qottab Making
Watch the production of qottab where the pastry shells are filled with a mixture of ground walnuts, sugar, cardamom, and rosewater before being deep-fried in clarified butter and dusted with powdered sugar, the process producing the crescent-shaped pastries that Yazd's confectioners have perfected over centuries.
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Pashmak Cotton Candy
See the production of pashmak — Yazd's extraordinary spun sugar candy that resembles cotton candy but is made from caramelized sugar and sesame flour pulled and twisted into thread-like strands — the confection requiring both physical strength and delicate skill to produce.
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Traditional Restaurant
Eat at a traditional Yazdi restaurant in a converted historic building where dishes characteristic of the central Iranian plateau — ash-e reshteh noodle soup, abgoosht lamb stew, and the slow-cooked rice dishes with their crispy tahdig — are served in an architectural setting of mud-brick arches and wind tower cooling.
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Spice Bazaar
Shop the spice section of Yazd's bazaar where saffron, dried limes (limu omani), barberries, rose petals, and the spice blends specific to Yazdi cooking are sold alongside the nuts and dried fruits that fill the sweet shops, the sensory richness of the spice market being one of the great pleasures of visiting this desert city.
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Dizi House Experience
Eat dizi — the traditional Iranian pot stew of lamb, chickpeas, potatoes, and tomatoes cooked in individual stone pots — in a traditional dizi house where the proper method of eating (first drinking the broth with bread, then mashing the solids) is explained, the dish representing Iran's most beloved everyday comfort food.