The road from Shiroka Laka to Varbovo requires patience. It is narrow, winding, uneven, and challenging. Just as the adrenaline of passing other cars (and a lorry loaded with hay bales) reaches its peak, we cross an old Roman bridge, and two magnificent stone buildings appear down to our right. This is ‘Silivriyak’, Maria Jekova’s place. Hidden in the shadows of the Varbovska river gorge, nestled between the steep hills of the Rhodope Mountains, it was a focal point of village life centuries ago, and it remains so today. We will be staying here for the next two nights, and even as I write these lines, I know they will be wonderful.
We arrive in the village of Varbovo in early September, on a Friday, just before the sun begins to set and hide the houses in the shadow of the surrounding peaks.
Who is Maria Jekova? You might know her as the winner of the seventh season of MasterChef Bulgaria and the host of the television show ‘The Taste of Bulgaria’. We know her as a wonderful person who follows her ideas and dreams. For Maria, ‘Silivriyak’ is a dream realised with a lot of love and an equal amount of hard work, the kind of effort only the inhabitants of these steep hills in the Rhodope Mountains truly understand. She sources her ingredients personally, travelling across Bulgaria to discover almost forgotten products, recipes, and stories. She does this to share them and give them a new lease of life. You can follow her discoveries on her Instagram profile, as well as on the ‘Silivriyak’ page, and we hope that one day you will make it to ‘Silivriyak’ yourself.
Hotel or restaurant?
I could not call ‘Silivriyak’ either a hotel or a restaurant. It is a creation of Maria Jekova that we should rather call an experience. The stay and the food are inextricably linked, along with the stories behind the place and everything surrounding it. You come here and stay for two days to truly experience ‘Silivriyak’, not just to check into a hotel, have dinner in a restaurant, and do something else in between.
The symbolism: What is ‘Silivriyak’? The Rhodope silivriyak (Haberlea rhodopensis) is an endemic plant that has survived since the Ice Age. It is also known as the ‘Orpheus flower’. Its most amazing quality is its anabiosis: the flower can spend years in a completely dried-out state, only to spring back to life at the first drops of water.
We settle into the ‘Tika’ and ‘Boyka’ rooms. Here, each space has its own unique name. For seven-year-old Adrianka, the building is mystical, beautiful, and charmingly ‘old-fashioned’. The interior offers that clean, unobtrusive luxury that tears you away from the city and immerses you in village comfort: huge beds with woollen blankets, fluffy traditional rugs on the floor, small wooden tables, spacious bathrooms (ours even had a bathtub), and windows framing breathtaking views. There is no Wi-Fi here, nor mobile phone reception, but that is exactly what we were looking for. Instead of scrolling and sending messages, for the next few days we call out to our friends through the windows, just like in the old days. There is only one other car here before us, but we know that all the rooms are fully booked.
Reservations: In fact, bookings here are made at least a year in advance. We asked about available dates at the beginning of the summer. Everything was booked for both this year and the next. However, two rooms had become available for today, and we very quickly replied to the email inviting us at the last minute. So, if you decide to go, write to them immediately to secure whatever dates you can!
Now, let us get back to everything else, all the things we actually need here. Maria welcomes us. She personally greets absolutely everyone, though it is mainly just her and her mother working here. She showed us to our rooms, gave us a warm smile, shared a few kind words, and then went back to preparing dinner. Meanwhile, we sat outside in the cool, fresh air. The village came to life with our chatter, but apart from us, there was no one else around.
And so, we are ready to experience ‘Silivriyak’, and for it to experience us!
The village of Varbovo, the potato store, the community centre, and forgotten history
The hard-to-reach village and the narrow, steep road in the Rhodopes might deter some, but if you gather your courage, this path will lead you to a true sanctuary. ‘Silivriyak’ is actually a combination of two stone buildings. The first, main building used to be a potato store, while the second one, which is currently being restored, was the village community centre.
Every story begins with where we find ourselves and why we are seeing this beauty for the first time. Most tourists are familiar with the neighbouring Shiroka Laka, but Varbovo often remains off the beaten track: somewhat forgotten, yet proud. If you look closely, massive three-storey stone houses peek through the dense vegetation. They are silent witnesses to a bygone era from the late 19th century, when the village was bustling with life and boasted over 1,000 residents. Today, only three or four people live here permanently, but the impressive architecture continues to preserve the spirit of the Rhodopes. It serves as a reminder of the diligence and perseverance with which the people of those times built their homes and communities.
Looking now at the photos of the houses perched on the surrounding slopes, these large and solemn buildings evoke memories of bygone times and the people who also built the village church, which we will wander down to see later…
Friday evening: When food has a history
We are gathering now. Cars pull up one by one among the bushes, and the guests arrive. The population of ‘Silivriyak’ swells to twenty people, including Maria and her mother, two dogs, four children, and a baby. We strike up a conversation with some of the other guests, and by the end of the weekend, we have actually spoken with everyone on one occasion or another. Dinner is scheduled for 8:00 pm. Our table is set, and we realise we have sat down a little early. The children and their friends are already seated, playing games, having pushed glasses and plates aside to make room. They slightly ruin the elegant look of our table, but we are all just glad they are having fun. Besides, they do not have much choice, as there is no internet.
Dinner begins with homemade sourdough bread. With candles everywhere, fine mountain water, and glasses of wine, Maria leads us on a step-by-step journey through Rhodopean cuisine. Do not expect a 10-course tasting menu with tiny 20-gram portions. Here, the food illustrates real life in a Rhodope village, using the very same ingredients and techniques that local communities used for cooking over 100 years ago. When we made our booking, we asked Maria not to include chocolate in Adriana’s meals due to an intolerance. ‘Well, chocolate does not exactly grow around here anyway,’ she replied jokingly.
Amaranth, cherry tomatoes, and branza
The culinary journey at the table is highly educational. The dishes on Maria’s table are made entirely from mountain produce, though some of them genuinely surprise us. For instance, the fact that cherry tomatoes are by no means a trendy product of recent years. On the contrary, they have been grown here for a long time, but locals called them slivki (little plums). Therefore, they quite traditionally find their way into our salad, alongside marinated roasted peppers and… amaranth. You might know amaranth as a weed, but wild leafy greens like it used to be a regular part of the Rhodope diet. And thanks to Maria, we also get to enjoy it. Next, we have kachamak (a traditional cornmeal dish) with branza (aged sheep’s cheese), wild porcini mushrooms, and homemade pastry flakes. Maria explains the difference in the production process between standard white brine cheese and branza.
The main course tonight is duck with… something resembling lasagne sheets. The truth is that dough and pastry have always held an important place in Bulgarian cuisine, and the types of dishes we know today as pasta can be entirely Bulgarian in origin.
And the dessert is… spicy rice. It is not actually spicy at all. Here is the story behind it: in the local Rhodope dialect, the word for a sour taste is ‘spicy’ (lyut). This dessert is made from rice boiled in the water from soaked dried plums, similar to a dried fruit compote. Because the plums are naturally very sweet, it results in an exquisite sweet and sour dessert. In the past, this delicacy was served on major holidays or special occasions, such as the birth of a child.
Saturday: A walk and memories
Every morning at ‘Silivriyak’ begins with tea and breakfast. This is, as you might guess, once again made up of local delicacies. On Saturday morning, we enjoy superb tomatoes and cucumbers, cheese, homemade banitsa with spinach and branza, fresh blueberries, blueberry jam, and homemade sheep’s milk yoghurt. As we fail to clear the table entirely, Maria offers us takeaway boxes so we can pack up the leftover food for the afternoon. There is absolutely no chance of going hungry at ‘Silivriyak’.
On Saturday, we decided to take a walk to the village of Gela. The stroll was pleasantly special for us. Mimi still remembers exactly which meadow in Gela I proposed to her on, in my own clumsy and not particularly tactful way. It was with a view of the Rhodope peaks, having just picked blueberries from the forest to make jam. Those were the days when we were much younger. Just below the hill where we had stopped to discuss our future plans lies the Holy Trinity Church, which we are walking down to today. We also make friends with Georgi and Lili from Plovdiv, who were sitting at the next table the evening before, along with their baby Lora and their puppy. The children run around and roll in the meadows above Gela, while we slowly amble along the paths.
We head back to Varbovo along that emotional road, which once again gets our adrenaline pumping, and we think to ourselves that we would rather not travel it too often. Perhaps if you drive it frequently you get used to it, but it certainly has not become a favourite of ours.
Back in Varbovo, everyone is engrossed in books, games, and conversations. We drink coffee or wine and savour the peace and quiet. We send the children to the bathtub to wash up and get ready for the evening. Meanwhile, we gently migrate towards the tables for our 8:00 pm dinner. It is September, and while it is over 30 degrees in the cities, the temperature here drops rapidly below 18. We wrap ourselves in blankets, thoughtfully left out by Maria for city-dwelling guests like us.
We tried ‘MavrudA’. What is ‘MavrudA’? ‘MavrudA’ is Maria Jekova’s personal wine project. She is the proud owner of three decares of vineyards. These are entirely natural wines from the emblematic Bulgarian Mavrud grape variety, made without any stabilisers. However, you do need to be a fan of natural wines to appreciate them.
💡 If you are interested in learning more about the diversity of our native wines, check out what we have gathered here: Bulgarian Grape Varieties for Wine: Famous and Forgotten
Saturday dinner gets off to a good start again, even though everyone is tired from walking around Gela, Shiroka Laka, or the surrounding area. Yet everyone is happy, and great conversations are flowing. The music is playing from a record player. The couple at the next table keeps getting up to ‘flip the record’, for which we are grateful. The records do not actually finish that quickly; it is just that the atmosphere, the food, and the conversations consume the time, making it fly by.
A taste of the sea at 1,200 metres altitude
The food takes us on a Rhodopean journey once again. The starter is intriguing and feels very maritime: a salad of dried mackerel, a sauce packed with lovage, local root vegetables, and boiled beans. Maria explains that even though we are in the mountains, dried sea fish was not at all unknown in these lands. Because of the proximity to Greece and the fact that many locals went abroad for seasonal work, bringing various dried fish back home, this flavour was also part of the Rhodope menu. We unanimously agree that the dish is both highly surprising and insanely delicious.
Next is homemade couscous with a babek (traditional cured sausage) sauce. We mentioned earlier that dough products are an integral part of Rhodope cuisine, and the homemade couscous prepared by local women is no exception. The main course continues the fish theme: this time it is trout, a small pastry filled with crayfish, and a plakiya (baked vegetable and tomato) sauce. This is yet another magical example that Rhodope flavours are vast and by no means limited to the universally beloved potatoes. In fact, during our two days at ‘Silivriyak’, not a single potato was harmed or eaten.
Dinner concluded with homemade halva, another festive dish, which is especially popular among the Bulgarian Muslim community.
Sunday morning: Sourdough mekitsi and the past of Varbovo
On Sunday, we get up and have mekitsi (fried dough) for breakfast. The dough has been proving for 72 hours, resulting in authentic, fluffy sourdough mekitsi. Afterwards, literally everyone heads to the church in Varbovo village. We had already seen it from the outside on Friday, but the verger only opens it on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. We all walk down the path to reach St George’s Church, with its history previously unknown to us.
It was built way back in 1871, and legend has it that the local residents erected it in just 40 days. The church was entirely painted by Dimitar Hristov Zograf from the renowned Stanimaka Art School. The most impressive thing is that the frescoes have retained their freshness and have never been restored since their creation to this day, or so the internet claims.
In the churchyard lies the old village school, which has long been closed, although there are active citizens who wish to restore it.
We were there with our friends Radi and Joro, who are wonderfully lovely, and their children. Radi writes for LifeBites, and you should definitely check out their travelogue about Varbovo from a previous visit.
📍 See the location of ‘Silivriyak’ on Google Maps
About the road and the adrenaline: Let us be completely honest. The road up to Varbovo is a true mountain adventure. Passing oncoming vehicles is difficult, so if you have a car with low ground clearance or do not feel completely confident on steep terrain, just drive extremely slowly and with heightened caution.
Are we leaving already?
And so, Sunday’s departures begin in the yard: the place where we all say our goodbyes and exchange contact details. We will have to save them on our phones later, because there is no signal here. This commotion takes us all hours, accompanied by much more chatting.
It is rare to see such a departure from an accommodation. We part ways like old friends with people who, until two days ago, were complete strangers. We say goodbye to Maria and Varbovo with that special feeling of fulfilment that you only experience when you have been somewhere truly special. We cannot wait to come back to experience ‘Silivriyak’!
A collection of hotels that have preserved their spirit and authenticity: Authentic hotels