Hunza Walnut Cake: Where to Try the Famous Slice

Hunza walnut cake is a dense slice of local walnuts set in a sticky, sweet filling over a crumbly pastry base, closer to a walnut pie or tart than to a sponge. The version most people mean is the one at Café de Hunza in Karimabad, which has been serving it since the late 1990s and is still where visitors go looking for it. Eat it with coffee or Hunza tea, and carry cash.

This guide covers what the cake is, the café behind its name, what else is worth buying there and at what price, and how to take a cake home.

What is Hunza walnut cake?

It is not a cake in the birthday sense. Accounts from people who have eaten it at Café de Hunza agree on the main points: a short, crumbly pastry shell, filled to the top with walnut pieces bound in a sweet sauce that some describe as honey and others as caramel. It is baked as a whole cake and served by the slice.

The walnuts are the point. Walnut trees grow through Karimabad's terraced orchards alongside apricot, mulberry and apple, and Café de Hunza's cake has long been described as made with locally grown walnuts. The nuts are picked in autumn and keep well once dried, so the cake is not tied to the harvest.

Opinions are not unanimous. Some visitors find it rich and moist; others find it drier and more like a biscuit than they expected, and a few call it overrated. It is very sweet, so a plain drink alongside helps: black coffee, black tea, or the valley's herbal tea.

Café de Hunza: the place behind the name

Café de Hunza is on the main road through Karimabad, within walking distance of Baltit Fort. The café gives its start date as 1998; a 2017 tribute in The Friday Times put it at 1999. It was founded by Shafqat Ali, known to regulars as Shafqat Bhai, who came from the nearby village of Haiderabad. He opened it to serve simple food, such as panini and baked potatoes, to trekkers and climbers coming down off the mountains, and built it up into a two-storey café and small library with a wooden bar looking out over the valley.

Over the years he added a shop selling carpets and local handicrafts, a mountain-bike hire service, and a range of local produce: honey, apricot oil, almonds and soap. Shafqat Ali died of a heart attack on 3 June 2017 while being taken to Gilgit. He had run the café with his son, Nawazish, and it has carried on: in 2026 its website still advertised espresso and "the famous Hunza Walnut Cake", and sold its own oils, jams and tea online.

The café is self-service and can be crowded in summer, so go earlier in the day if you want a table with a view.

What else the café sells, and what it costs

The café does not publish a price for the walnut cake, and figures in old reviews are out of date, so ask at the counter before you order a whole one. It does publish prices for the products in its shop. In 2026 its website listed:

Prices change, and what is on the shelf in Karimabad may differ from the website. Both oils are sold as Hunza produce, and a bottle is easier to carry home than a cake. Our post on shopping in Karimabad covers dried fruit, nuts and handicrafts from the rest of the bazaar.

Other places to try it

The cake has been copied, and walnut cake now turns up on café menus elsewhere in Karimabad and further up the valley. We have not been able to confirm which of these are consistently good, and cafés here open, close and change hands from one season to the next, so we don't name them. Ask your hotel or guesthouse which kitchen is baking well this year, and try a slice before buying a whole cake anywhere.

For the rest of the valley's food, from cafés to local dishes, see our guide to the best restaurants in Hunza.

When is it open, and how do you get there?

The café's website does not give opening hours. Listings show it open daily from late morning into the evening during the tourist season. In winter, when much of Karimabad closes or shortens its hours, phone the number on the café's website before making a special trip.

Karimabad is about 100 km north of Gilgit on the Karakoram Highway; we allow about two hours for the drive, including police checks. Shared vans run between Gilgit and central Hunza, and our guide to local transport in Hunza covers them and the taxis within the valley. If you are coming all the way from Islamabad by road, note that the UK government advises against all travel on the Karakoram Highway between Mansehra and Chilas; in summer the Babusar route avoids that stretch, and foreign-passport holders should check their own government's advice, since travelling against it can void insurance.

Buying a whole cake to take home

Whole cakes are sold as well as slices. If you need one on a particular day, or you are in Karimabad early or late in the season, ask the café a day ahead rather than assuming one will be ready.

A dense filling like this travels better than a cream cake, but the sauce softens in heat. Keep the box flat, out of the sun and away from the car heater, and ask the café how long it will keep. It cannot be made without nuts, since the walnuts are the filling rather than a garnish, so it is not a gift for anyone with a nut allergy.

Is it worth going out of your way for?

If you are in Karimabad for Baltit Fort anyway, yes. A slice and a coffee on the terrace takes under an hour, and Café de Hunza is part of the history of tourism in the valley, which is reason enough to stop. It is not worth a separate trip up from Gilgit on its own, and if you don't like very sweet food, buy a bottle of walnut oil or a jar of apricot jam instead.

Our guide to Gilgit and Hunza covers where to stay and what else to see in Karimabad if this is part of a longer trip.

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