If you've spent any time researching a trip to Gilgit-Baltistan, you already know the photos do most of the talking: Rakaposhi from a balcony in Karimabad, the cold blue of Attabad Lake, the apricot blossoms in spring. What rarely makes it into the highlight reels is the food, and that is a shame, because the meals you eat in Hunza and Skardu are tied directly to the landscape that brought you there in the first place.
This guide is built around one practical question I get asked a lot: Can you actually eat well in Hunza and Skardu without burning through your budget? The short answer is yes, but only if you know what to order and where to look. Most of the traditional dishes below cost between Rs. 150 and Rs. 400 at small family-run kitchens, dhabas, and bazaar stalls. Tourist-facing restaurants in Karimabad charge two to three times as much for the same plate, so the difference between a Rs. 250 chapshuro and a Rs. 700 one is rarely about the food; it's the view and the tablecloth.
Prices below are typical 2026 ranges based on what local kitchens, mid-range cafés, and bazaar dhabas across Karimabad, Aliabad, Gulmit, and Skardu Bazaar are charging. Expect some variation by season and location.
Why Hunza and Skardu Cuisine Is Different from the Rest of Pakistan
Most Pakistani food you've eaten, Punjabi, Sindhi, even Pashtun, relies heavily on oil, garam masala, and slow-cooked gravies. Hunza and Skardu food does not. The cuisine here grew out of necessity: short growing seasons, long winters, and historically limited access to spices from down-country.
What you get instead is a kitchen built around wheat, barley, buckwheat, dairy, walnuts, and apricots, especially apricots. Hunzakuts have been pressing apricot kernels into oil for generations, and that oil ends up on bread, in soups, and drizzled over yogurt. Skardu, closer to the Tibetan Plateau, leans more toward Balti cooking: hand-pulled noodles, steamed dumplings, and broth-based dishes that share a clear lineage with Ladakhi and Tibetan cuisine.
Two practical things this means for travelers:
- The food is mild. If you can't handle chili, you'll be fine here.
- Portions are designed for mountain energy, heavy on complex carbs and dairy, light on grease.
Now, the dishes.
1. Chapshuro — The Hunza Meat Pie (Rs. 250–400)
If you only try one thing in Hunza, make it chapshuro. It's a flat, round meat pie with thin dough wrapped around minced beef or yak, onions, garlic, green chilies, and herbs, then baked or pan-cooked until the edges are crisp.
Locals occasionally call it "Hunza pizza," which undersells it. A good chapshuro is juicy in the middle, crackly on the outside, and substantial enough to be a full lunch.
Where to try it: Hunza Food Pavilion in Karimabad, run by Laal Shehzadi, is the most recommended spot. It sits on the cobbled path leading up to Baltit Fort, and the chapshuro is made with organic ingredients she sources from local farmers. Mountain Cup Café in Karimabad also serves a solid version.
2. Gyaling — Soft Apricot-Oil Pancakes (Rs. 150–250)
Gyaling is a hand-stretched flatbread, almost pancake-thin, cooked on a flat pan and served with a pour of apricot oil and a spoonful of yogurt or fresh butter. Breakfast food, mostly.
The apricot oil is what makes this dish nutty, slightly fruity, and unlike anything you'll have tasted at sea level. Pair it with salty (namkeen) tea, and you have the standard Hunza morning.
Where to try it: Most Karimabad guesthouses will make this on request if you ask the night before. Hidden Paradise (operating since 1983) serves a reliable version.
3. Diram Fitti — Sweet Sprouted Wheat Bread (Rs. 200–350)
This is one of those dishes you remember weeks after the trip. Diram Fitti is bread made from sprouted wheat flour, which gives it a natural, almost honeyed sweetness without any added sugar. It's baked until the crust turns deep gold and the inside stays soft.
Eat it with butter, yogurt, or just a cup of green tea. It's also genuinely good for you. Sprouted grains are easier to digest at altitude.
Where to try it: Hidden Paradise in Karimabad serves Diram Fitti with locally pressed apricot oil, probably the most authentic version available to tourists.
4. Burus Berikutz / Buroshapik — Layered Bread with Cheese and Herbs (Rs. 250 400)
Layers of soft bread folded around fresh cheese curd (burus) and chopped herbs. The texture is somewhere between a stuffed paratha and a quesadilla, but the cheese is mild, and the herbs do most of the work.
This is hospitality food. If a Hunzakut family invites you in for tea, there's a decent chance buroshapik shows up on the table.
Where to try it: Bozlanj Café in Gulmit (about an hour from Karimabad on the KKH) specializes in Wakhi-Pamiri dishes, including a version of this bread. The café, run by Malika Sultana and Rashida Begum, was built specifically to keep these recipes alive.
5. Molida — Hunza's Comfort Food (Rs. 150–250)
Molida looks unimpressive in a photo. It's torn pieces of leftover roti, soaked in lassi, mixed with herbs, and drizzled with apricot oil. That's it.
But it's exactly the kind of meal you want on day two of a trip when the altitude is starting to slow your appetite. Light, cool, easy to digest. Locals eat it for lunch in summer.
Where to try it: Ask at homestays. Most tourist restaurants don't put it on the menu, but families will make it if you ask.
6. Harissa — Slow-Cooked Wheat and Meat (Rs. 300–500)
Not to be confused with the North African chili paste. Hunza/Skardu harissa is a thick, slow-cooked porridge of wheat and meat (usually beef or mutton) that's pounded together until the grains break down, leaving something between a stew and a paste.
It's winter food, heavy, warming, calorie-dense. If you're traveling between November and March, this is the dish that will keep you upright.
Where to try it: Eagle's Nest Hotel in Duikar (above Karimabad) is well-known for harissa, particularly in colder months.
7. Dawdo — Hand-Pulled Noodle Soup (Rs. 200–350)
Dawdo is the everyday soup of Hunza households. Hand-pulled or hand-cut noodles, a clear broth, vegetables, and sometimes small pieces of meat. Vegetarians can usually get a meatless version without any fuss.
It's the kind of meal you want after a long day at Attabad Lake or hiking up to Eagle's Nest. Warming, simple, restorative.
Where to try it: Most local restaurants in Karimabad and Aliabad serve dawdo. Quality varies; the soup smell at one Karimabad spot has been flagged in recent reviews, so trust your nose.
8. Phitti — Traditional Mountain Flatbread (Rs. 100–200)
Phitti is the bread you'll see most often on local tables. Made from wheat or buckwheat, baked in a wood-fired tandoor or oven, and eaten with everything: yogurt, butter, curry, chai.
Buckwheat phitti is denser and earthier; wheat phitti is softer. Both are good. As a side or a base for other dishes, it's hard to beat for the price.
Where to try it: Any local bakery in Karimabad Bazaar or Skardu Bazaar. Buy it warm, in the morning, straight from the oven.
9. Balay — Skardu's Signature Noodle Soup (Rs. 250–400)
If dawdo is Hunza's everyday soup, balay is Skardu's. The noodles are thicker, often hand-pulled into ribbons, and the broth has a deeper, more savory profile. There's a clear Tibetan/Balti influence in its seasoning.
Eat balay at dinner on a cold night, and you'll understand why it's been a staple here for centuries.
Where to try it: Skardu Bazaar has several small restaurants serving balay. City Inn Restaurant is locally regarded as one of the better Pakistani-Balti spots in Skardu.
10. Mamtu — Balti Steamed Dumplings (Rs. 250–400)
Mamtu are the Balti cousin of momos, steamed dumplings stuffed with minced meat, onions, and herbs (or vegetables, if you ask). They're usually served with a thin chili-based dipping sauce or alongside a small bowl of broth.
Lighter than fried dumplings, easier on the stomach at altitude, and almost always made fresh to order.
Where to try it: Skardu Bazaar stalls and Chainomy Skardu both offer mamtu. Order them with a side of clear soup.
11. Marzan — Roasted Barley Energy Food (Rs. 150–250)
Marzan is roasted barley flour mixed with apricot oil (or sometimes water and butter) into a thick, energy-dense paste. It looks plain. It is plain. But it's also the kind of food that fueled people walking these passes for centuries.
If you're trekking to K2 or Rakaposhi base camp, or anywhere else, keep some marzan in your bag. It doesn't spoil, and it carries you for hours.
Where to try it: Village kitchens and homestays. Less common in restaurant menus.
12. Prapu — Noodles with Walnut or Apricot Kernel Sauce (Rs. 300–450)
This one is genuinely unusual. Hand-cut noodles tossed in a sauce made from crushed walnuts or apricot kernels, sometimes both. The sauce is earthy, slightly bitter from the kernels, and creamy and nutty from the walnuts.
If you've eaten Sichuan dan dan noodles, the texture and concept are vaguely similar, but the flavor profile is completely its own.
Where to try it: Café Culture Hunza in central Hunza Valley occasionally serves prapu and other lesser-known traditional dishes. Worth calling ahead.
13. Azoq — Warm Barley Porridge (Rs. 150–250)
Azoq is a winter breakfast barley porridge cooked until soft and finished with a generous spoonful of butter or fat. Smooth, mildly sweet, deeply warming.
It's not on most tourist menus, but if you're in Skardu between November and February, ask for it at a homestay or guesthouse, and most hosts will be happy to make it.
Where to try it: Skardu homestays. Almost never seen at standard restaurants.
14. Khambir — Dense Local Bread (Rs. 100–200)
Khambir is the everyday bread of Balti households: thick, slightly chewy, with a denser crumb than a typical naan. It's traditionally eaten for breakfast with butter tea (po cha) or apricot jam.
Like phitti, it's best fresh and warm. Cold khambir is fine; warm khambir is something else.
Where to try it: Skardu Bazaar bakeries, early morning. Most homestays serve it for breakfast by default.
15. Apricot Oil Fried Bread with Yogurt (Rs. 150–300)
Closing with the dish that, more than any other, sums up what makes Hunza food distinctive: a piece of local bread shallow-fried in apricot oil and served with a side of fresh yogurt.
Three ingredients. No spices. The apricot oil's nuttiness against the cool tang of the yogurt is the entire point, and it works.
Where to try it: Village homestays and the smaller cafés in Gulmit and Hussaini. Bozlanj Café serves a version (Ghilmind) with cottage cheese, apricot oil, and herbs.
Where to Actually Find Cheap, Authentic Food
A pattern: the prices in this guide assume you're eating where locals eat. That mostly means three places.
Karimabad Bazaar and the path up to Baltit Fort — Hunza Food Pavilion (Laal Shehzadi's place) is the standout. Hidden Paradise has been around since 1983 and is reliable. Café de Hunza (operating since 1994) is a tourist staple known for its walnut cake, but it tends to be pricier.
Gulmit, in Upper Hunza (Gojal) — Bozlanj Café on the KKH, near the Gulmit filling station, serves Wakhi-Pamiri dishes you won't find in Karimabad. Worth the hour drive.
Skardu Bazaar — Less curated than Karimabad, more chaotic, and the prices reflect that. Stalls selling khambir, mamtu, and balay are scattered throughout the main bazaar. Busy stalls = fresh food.
The general rule: if a restaurant has a printed English menu and a polished interior, expect to pay 2–3x the prices listed above. The food is often very good, but it's not where the value is.
Best Time to Eat in Hunza and Skardu
May to October — Fresh produce is at its peak. Apricots come in around July. Local greens, dairy, and herbs are abundant. This is also peak tourist season, so popular restaurants book up.
November to March — Winter food: harissa, azoq, slow-cooked stews, butter tea, dense breads. Many tourist-facing restaurants close or run reduced menus, but homestays come into their own. If you want the most authentic seasonal experience, this is the time.
A Few Practical Tips
- Carry small cash. Card payments are unreliable outside of larger hotels.
- Ask before ordering at restaurants without posted prices—it avoids awkwardness later.
- Tell your host if you're vegetarian; most dishes have meatless versions, but they need to be requested.
- Water at altitude is generally cleaner than down-country water, but stick to bottled or boiled water for the first day.
- Tea (chai or namkeen chai) is offered constantly. Accept it. It's part of the hospitality.
Final Thoughts
The food in Hunza and Skardu is not going to win prizes for visual drama. There's no biryani mound moment, no thal of twelve curries. What you get instead is something quieter — meals built around two or three good ingredients, cooked the way they've been cooked for generations, and priced for the people who actually live there.
That last part is what makes the under-Rs. The Rs. 400 budget is realistic. You're not paying for novelty; you're paying for what's already on the family table.
If you're heading up north this season, eat at the small places. Talk to the people running them. Order things you can't pronounce. The mountains will still be there for the photos when you're done.