It’s a grey early spring day in the bustling coastal district of Üsküdar on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. The holy month of Ramadan is in its last days, and many Istanbullites are fasting until the evening. Some of those who aren’t are waiting in a long queue outside of the local kent lokantası (“city restaurant”) for a late lunch, and this is the best deal around. 40 TL (US $1.05) gets you a main course with meat, a side or two, and a bowl of soup. Today, the menu is döner, buttery rice pilaf, and lentil soup, and we’ve arrived with an empty stomach.
This restaurant is among the more than 15 that have been opened and operated by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) since 2022, and they have become increasingly popular and necessary as Turkey’s rampant inflation and soaring food prices have hit the city’s residents hard. The model has been replicated nationwide, and there are now city restaurants in all of the country’s biggest cities, including Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, Adana, Antalya, Gaziantep and numerous others.
While in line, we strike up a conversation with Yaşar, a 65-year-old retired ship captain who declined to give his last name. He lives in the neighboring district of Ümraniye, and has queued up just after 3 p.m. to partake in a tasty and healthy subsidized meal. Like much of the country, Yaşar is upset with the state of things: “The highest banknote is two hundred TL, and you can’t even buy a kilo of cheese with that,” Yaşar grumbles. “Given the conditions in Turkey, the food that you eat here would cost at least seven hundred to eight hundred TL elsewhere,” he added. Though he may have exaggerated that figure, it is true that an equivalent meal at a modest tradesman’s restaurant would cost 8-10 times as much.
Just shy of half an hour later, we make it to the door. Suddenly an employee of the restaurant pops out and says “we’re out of food” to the unlucky dozen or so of us that have arrived late. Perhaps out of hunger-derived delusion, we stay in line until we get to the register just to be told the same thing. Lunch is over, and the city restaurant is now preparing for the iftar (Ramadan fast-breaking meal) at 7:30 p.m.. This is when we notice a crowd of elderly folks sitting on pieces of cardboard on the adjacent amphitheater-esque steps: it’s unclear how long they have been waiting, but what is certain is that they will wait another four hours before they can have their first meal since the break of dawn.
Iftar is often a celebratory occasion, where multiple courses of food are consumed. Restaurants often offer fixed iftar menus, and it is customary for families to break their fast together over an impressive meal. But in 2025, Turkey is in the midst of an economic crisis that has rendered it impossible for millions of Turks to enjoy their iftar this way. The least fortunate wait for hours to have dinner that they would not be able to afford at any other restaurant. “What can these people eat when earning fourteen-thousand TL [US $368]?” Yaşar asks, referring to the minimum monthly pension that many of the retirees waiting around likely earn.
The city restaurants are among the key initiatives of Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, whose administration has become recognized for its efforts to serve the people. While the majority of restaurant workers in Turkey are men, most of the city restaurant employees are women, which is part of Imamoğlu’s goal to increase employment among women. On March 19, Imamoğlu – who is recognized as the most formidable challenge to longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – was arrested on corruption charges that supporters have dismissed as politically-motivated. That sparked a week’s worth of nationwide protests, which do not seem to be slowing down.
The demonstrations are the largest that Turkey has witnessed since 2013, and on March 29 a reported 2.2 million people gathered at a seaside park in the district of Maltepe in defiance of the mayor’s arrest. The week prior, on the second day of the protests, there was a mobile köfte cart grilling up affordable sandwiches for the demonstrators in the park across from the city municipality headquarters, and by the fourth day there were around a dozen food carts that had popped up in the area. The smell of köfte and sucuk wafted through the air, temporarily counteracting the stench of tear gas.
Also arrested and stripped from office was the mayor of the Şişli district, Resul Emrah Şahan. When a trustee was appointed in his place, the three city restaurants in Şisli suddenly closed. The new administration denied that they shut them down, citing supply problems, but this didn’t convince residents, as the restaurants remained closed for almost three weeks, only reopening on April 7. In Şişli’s Okmeydanı neighborhood, neighbors even set up a mobile soup kitchen in front of the shuttered city restaurant.
In Turkey, nothing remains distant from politics, and apparently subsidized meals for those in need are no exception. In last year’s local elections, Imamoğlu’s opponent Murat Kurum mocked the restaurants, saying that Imamoğlu was “talking about them as if they were an accomplishment,” which didn’t resonate well among many residents. Earlier in March, Turkey’s most renowned food critic Vedat Milor visited the Üsküdar city restaurant and filmed it for his YouTube channel, only to have the authorities launch an investigation against him on the charges of “covert advertising.”
“To remain neutral and independent, I do not accept invitations from any restaurant. I choose the places I go to and pay the bill myself,” Milor fired back in a post on X. Then, Imamoğlu himself added his two cents:
“I learned that an investigation was opened against some writers who went to the city restaurant. First [the government] made fun of them, then they belittle them, and now they are messing with those who go to them. It is a shame. These restaurants are the palaces of the poor, the low-income, the retired. More will be opened,” the mayor wrote.
It was now time to try our luck across town in the tourist heart of the old city, Sultanahmet. We hop on a ferry from Üsküdar to Eminönü and walk up the slight hill toward Sultanahmet’s city restaurant, tucked in a narrow side street just a stone’s throw away from the city’s most iconic destinations, such as the Hagia Sophia and the Basilica Cistern. Once again, lunch service was over and the women running the restaurant were taking a break before preparing the evening’s iftar. Outside, a group of older men, many with glum looks on their faces, were waiting for iftar. There were still two hours to go. An employee said that we could take a number and wait; we politely declined and left.
The next day we ventured back to Sultanahmet earlier and the third time was a charm – we made it while lunch service was in full effect. We enjoyed a stew of chickpeas and tender morsels of beef simmering in a delicious tomato sauce, a soothing and tasty bowl of chicken noodle soup, a plate of rice, and a cup of yogurt. Sitting across from us is Lokman Pala, a 56-year-old who owns a hotel in the neighborhood of Aksaray just a few tram stops away. He said that he enjoys the quality of the food and usually comes to the city restaurant every day. “It is clear that the food is healthy and goes through inspections. I’ve never fallen ill from what I eat here,” Pala said, emphasizing that he trusts the city restaurants to maintain standards that others in the area do not.
As Turkey’s economy continues to deteriorate, the city restaurants will grow in importance, and the administration aims to keep opening them. They haven’t escaped the vicious arena of politics, which has turned everything into a battleground. But their existence is a valuable model from which other cities with large populations of low-income people should derive inspiration. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, but there should always be a cheap lunch.
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Published on April 07, 2025
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