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Editor’s note: It’s Soup Week at Culinary Backstreets, and to kick things off, our Istanbul correspondent takes us to an eatery in Beyoğlu whose hearty broths refuel late-night revelers and daytime workers alike.

Most of Murat Kelle Paça’s clientele stumble in between 1 and 5 o’clock in the morning, after a boisterous night of drinking, concert-going and dancing. Located in the heart of Beyoğlu and surrounded by the best nightlife in Istanbul, if not all of Turkey, Murat attracts one of the most diverse crowds of any restaurant we have seen in Istanbul.

During the day, the usual blue- and white-collar crowd – from lawyers to bankers to store attendants – trundles in during their lunch break. But flash-forward to nighttime and the scene becomes much more interesting.

Reminiscent of the cantina scene in Star Wars, the disparate creatures include rock musicians, pimply foreign-exchange students, Instagramming hipsters and everything and anything in between.

Murat serves soups, kebab platters and dürüms (wraps), which are all a cut above the rest. But the real stars of the Murat show are the hearty broths. As you walk into the cramped entrance, which is shared with the kitchen area, you will pass by the soup master ladling the steamy goodness into small metal bowls from the dozen or so pots surrounding him.

Every country has its famous “drunk munchies,” whether it is al pastor tacos in Mexico or versions of döner kebab all around Europe. Ask any Turk what the best post-drinking food to munch down on is, and they will usually answer, kelle paça. The dish, one of our favorite Turkish soups, consists of parts of sheep’s head served in a spicy red broth and is spectacularly good at Murat’s, where it is their most iconic dish. With this odd assortment of head-meat – including pieces of the brain – and delicious Urfa red pepper-infused spicy broth, we can’t help but be reminded of an Asian counterpart, spicy Vietnamese pho, only without the noodles.

Our second-favorite dish served at Murat’s, and the strangest dish we have seen served in the Middle East, is şırdan. Originating from the late-night street vendors of Adana, the dish consists of a part of the sheep intestines that is thoroughly cleaned and stuffed with spiced bulgur and then slowly boiled in broth. Murat is one of the few proprietors who serves this dish in Istanbul. There’s no beating around the bush here; şırdan’s phallic shape is certainly odd-looking, and it has strange gill-like flaps at the posterior end. It may look like something eaten on a galaxy far, far away, but for more adventurous foodies, there will be nothing tastier than a plate or two of these stuffed intestines covered in a layer of cumin powder, alongside a cup of ayran (salted yogurt drink).

If the idea of eating odd-looking parts of the sheep’s head and unidentified parts of the intestines isn’t your cup of soup, the mercimek (red lentil) soup is one of the best we’ve ever had in Turkey. Mercimek, a staple that is probably found in 90 percent of Turkish eateries around the country, can be a bit watered down or bland; however, at Murat the soup’s unique creamy texture and perfect seasoning make the others seem like they were bought at a supermarket and stuck in the microwave. And for those with squeamish stomachs, it does not include any alien-looking parts of sheep’s organs.

Although most of Murat Kelle Paça’s income is probably made late at night, its food goes down well at all hours of the day, regardless of one’s state of inebriation.

The soup options:

Kelle çorba (head soup)
Kelle paça (pieces of head soup)
Mercimek (lentil soup)
Şırdan (stuffed intestines)
Dil (sheep tongue soup)
Beyin (brain soup)
Ayak paça (leg soup)
Soğuk tandır kelle (oven-baked sheep’s head soup, served cold)
İşkembe (tripe soup)

This article was originally published on December 29, 2014

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