Argos in Cappadocia

Service

The team here is young, local and warm, and I like them a lot. There's local wine and fruit waiting in the room, the concierge answers on WhatsApp at any hour, and if you mention a birthday or an anniversary something thoughtful turns up. When a room isn't right, they move you without a fuss.

Take the house tour. Someone walks you through the old monastery, the tunnels and the chapel, and you finish with a tasting in the wine cave. Do it on your first afternoon, because it's also how you learn your way around. The place is a maze, and it's easy to get lost.

It isn't polished. Breakfast orders get forgotten now and then, used towels can sit by the pool longer than they should, and a message to maintenance doesn't always get an answer. If you want crisp, anticipate-everything service, the Museum Hotel up the road is sharper. I prefer the warmth here.

Rooms

Choosing a room takes some care. The 71 rooms are spread through old houses, caves and newer stone buildings, and the category names tell you very little. Within one category a room can be a bright stone house with a terrace over Pigeon Valley, or a cave deep in the hill with no window. The hotel says so plainly: with or without windows, depending on availability. So I'd never leave it to chance. Ask for a named room with a window and a valley view, in the older part of the hotel. The newer rooms at the edge look towards the town and have less of the atmosphere.

What they share is good taste: pale stone, kilims, a good bed with a pillow menu, a Nespresso machine, a Bose speaker, and in most of them a fireplace that the staff will lay for you. There's no television anywhere, on purpose. I didn't miss it, but you should know.

I'd skip the Standard rooms, which start at 20 square metres and are the likeliest to be dark. A Junior Suite or a Suite with a terrace is where I'd spend the money, and the best of them are the two-storey stone suites that look straight down the valley. The suites with a private pool are the famous ones, but be careful. The Cave Splendid Suites have a warm pool in the rock but no windows, and a heated pool in a sealed cave makes the air humid. The Splendid Suites have the pool and the daylight, and cost a good deal more. Sleeping in a real cave is wonderfully quiet and dark. It can also feel stifling, and it's hard to cool in a hot August.

Then there are the steps. Paths are steep and cobbled, some rooms have the bathroom down a curving stone stair, and a village road runs through the middle of the hotel. There are buggies to ferry you about and a few ground-level rooms, but if stairs are a real problem, this isn't your hotel.

Food and drink

You eat well here, which matters because Uchisar itself has little worth walking to. There are two restaurants, and both are in the Michelin Guide. Nahita is the one I'd choose. It cooks old Anatolian recipes with ingredients from within about 60 kilometres, much of it from the hotel's own garden, and it feels like the place the kitchen cares about most.

Breakfast is the meal I look forward to at Argos. It's a full Turkish spread of cheeses, salads, honey and breads, with menemen cooked to order, and you eat it on the terrace while the balloons are still coming down over the valley.

Seki is the older, more international restaurant, with a terrace that's the place to be at sunset. The slow-cooked lamb shoulder and the manti are what I'd order. It's less consistent than Nahita, and it's priced like a big-city restaurant, so check the drinks before you order a round of lemonades. Both dining rooms get warm in high summer.

The wine is a reason to come on its own. The cellar is an ancient tunnel holding well over 20,000 bottles, the hotel makes its own from vineyards nearby, and the sommeliers know Turkish wine properly. I'd ask for a glass of the Emir, the local white, by the fire in Seki Lounge.

Setting

Nothing else in Cappadocia looks like this. Argos sits just below Uchisar Castle, the highest point in the region, and steps down the hillside towards Pigeon Valley, with Mount Erciyes on the horizon. The restoration took fourteen years, and the care is obvious. You walk through tunnels, past a thousand-year-old monastery and a rock-cut hall that was once a caravan stop, and it never feels like a theme park.

On a flying morning the balloons rise over Goreme and drift across the valley in front of you, and you can watch from a terrace in a dressing gown with nobody else about. That's the big difference from the famous rooftops in Goreme, where you share the moment with a crowd. The downside is that Uchisar is quiet. You'll want a driver or the hotel's car for dinner anywhere else.

The heated pool hangs over the valley and stays open all year, and the spa has a second pool inside a cave, plus a hammam. The outdoor pool isn't large and only opens late in the morning.

Value

Argos is one of the two most expensive hotels in Cappadocia. Rooms start at around $350 to $400 a night in winter and about $500 in spring and autumn. The suites I'd actually book run from roughly $850 to $1,100, the windowless cave suites with a pool are around $1,600, and the Splendid Suites are over $2,000.

In the right room it's easily worth it. In a small dark Standard room at $500 I think you'd feel short-changed, and I'd sooner you spent less at a simpler hotel than did that. Food, drinks and spa treatments are priced for a capital city too, so budget for them.

This is a hotel where booking through an advisor is especially useful. Breakfast for two and a $100 hotel credit come with the same rate, with an upgrade when one is free, and more importantly we can pin down the exact room before you pay.