One household, three properties, one olive grove — all in and around Saranda.
None of this was planned as a business. It started with a garden we wanted for ourselves, and then, over many years, one thing led to the next.
Saranda has changed a lot in our lifetime. The town is busier each summer. Travellers come from Italy, Greece, Germany, the UK. Hotels go up, restaurants come and go. We've stayed small on purpose — only ever adding what we could take care of ourselves.
Many years ago we built a garden in the centre of Saranda — for ourselves, somewhere to sit and enjoy. Flowers, shade, a few tables. It wasn't for guests. It was just the place we wanted to come home to.
That garden is the same garden where Family Pot now serves dinner. Everything that came afterwards is, in one way or another, built around it.
Not long after the garden, we opened our first rooms for guests in the centre of Saranda. People needed somewhere to stay; we had the space; we hosted them ourselves. Over the years we added more, as we were able to take them on. That's how CityCenter Studios grew into what it is today — a small collection of central apartments, a minute from the promenade, still run by us directly.
We took on the olive grove in Çukë roughly a decade ago. It's about seven kilometres out of town, in the village where our farmhouse now sits. We pick the olives at harvest — usually October and November — and cold-press them. The oil is unfiltered, kept in dark bottles, and there's only one batch each year.
We're not trying to be an olive oil brand. We make what the grove gives us, and what's left after the kitchen uses it, we sell as a take-home bottle.
Family Pot opened in the garden last year. After years of cooking for family and the occasional guest, we decided to do it properly — slow-cooked meals from old recipes, prepared on demand when guests order, served in the garden we'd built decades earlier.
It's a small operation by design. We can host up to eight guests at a time in the garden. That's the ceiling. We won't expand it because the moment we do, it stops being what it is.
And this year, the farmhouse in Çukë — on the same land as the olive grove. The Olive Grove Farmhouse is the slower option, for guests who want a few days away from the summer crowd. It's a different mood entirely from town. Some people split their trip — a few nights in the city studios, a few nights in the village.
The four pages on this site each link to where the actual booking or ordering happens — Booking.com for the studios, Airbnb for the farmhouse, family-pot.com or WhatsApp for the kitchen. We don't take payments here. This is just where the story lives.
The easiest way to reach us, for anything, is WhatsApp: +355 69 840 4323.
Each of our places has its own page with photos, details, and how to book.