Istanbul

Fatih Sarmacısı: A Jelly Roll with an Ottoman Soul

Settling into our first cross-country journey in Turkey many years ago, we were pleasantly surprised by the comforts of Turkish bus travel. The young garson wore a proper uniform and dribbled cologne onto our hands every hour or so. Tea was served regularly, accompanied by one of our early Turkish culinary discoveries, Eti brand pop kek – those unctuous and delicious cakes frosted or stuffed with everything from raisins to chocolate – the Anatolian Twinkie. Call us heathens, but we love them. We’ve tried many traditional Turkish cakes, but none we encountered measured up to the beloved pop kek. That is, until one recent visit to Fatih Sarmacısı, an Ottoman-era shop making our new favorite cake, sarma (the word means “wrapped” or “rolled up” in Turkish).

Lisbon

Fox Coffee: King of Cachupa

Outside of an airy pink wedge of a building off of Praça do Chile, protected from the bright midday sun by an awning with “Fox Coffee” printed on it, we waited with great anticipation for lunch: cachupa do curaçao, a specialty of the house which involves stuffing a leaf of steamed Lombardo cabbage with stewy cachupa and a poached egg. This was our third visit to the so-called “King of Cachupa” and we were working our way through the menu trying to identify what was so different and superior about this cachupa, the signature dish of Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony situated off of the coast of West Africa.

Lisbon

Tasca Baldracca: Tasca Re-Boot

In your granddad’s Lisbon, lunch in a tasca may pass silently, the television, on mute, tuned to the mind-numbing variety show Praça da Alegria. It may take years to achieve a first name basis with the dour man behind the counter. On his menu, scribbled on a paper napkin and taped to the window, anything but cozido portuguesa on a Thursday would be tantamount to treason. Now don’t get us wrong, we have a deep appreciation for the code of that bastion of traditional Portuguese cooking that is the tasca – the knee-jerk resistance to change that has helped preserve neighborhood culinary traditions against a ferocious tide of globalized sameness – but, let’s admit it, fun is generally not on the menu.

Lisbon

Os Goliardos: Lisbon’s Funkmasters of Wine

The up-and-coming, terroir-obsessed wine distributor Os Goliardos is reached through a tiny alley that opens into a courtyard behind an apartment block in Campolide, a residential Lisbon neighborhood just north of the Amoreiras shopping mall. The company keeps a low profile, hiding Lisbon’s greatest wine storeroom in a narrow garage that counts several auto body shops as its neighbors. Since they keep odd hours, we were told to find a mechanic named Senhor Rui who would let us in with his key to pick up our order. We looked for him in a dark garage, where a man sat, listening to fado on the radio, beside a distressed Fiat. Wrong mechanic. Suddenly a large, smiling man in work clothes appeared in the yard jangling a set of keys.

Lisbon

Essential Bites: From Homemade Samosas to a “Filthy” Pork Sandwich in Lisbon

Switch Samosas (Or, Last Night a DJ Saved My Dinner) As lockdowns continue to ravage the restaurant industry, predictions in the news tell us we ain’t seen nothing yet. Uber Eats riders, unmistakable with their lime green cooler backpacks, have taken over the streets, blazing up the Avenida like road warriors in formation. Mom and pop can barely keep the lights of their tasca on much less pay the delivery shakedown. Hope is scarce for the independent, free-spirited food entrepreneur whose livelihood is built on serving people, directly. If you are as tired of this old tune as we are, prick up your ears to the story of Switch Samosas, a project of Marco Antão AKA DJ Switchdance, Lisbon’s premier DJ-cum-samosa-slinger, who is nurturing his community through the pandemic on his own terms with his mother’s samosas.

Istanbul

Farewell, Mutfak Dili: A Beloved Istanbul Restaurant Shuts Its Doors

The first time we officially met was at our bacchanalian book launch down a Galata side street in 2010. A natty beyefendi with neatly manicured sideburns hovered around the edges of a group as we signed copies of “Istanbul Eats, Exploring the Culinary Backstreets” and clinked Efes cans with friends, readers and party crashers. He found an opening and approached. “Do you know who I am?” He introduced himself as Levon bey, the owner of Mutfak Dili, a small restaurant down in the Perşembe Pazarı hardware market, in the seaside neighborhood of Karaköy. He’d come to thank us in person for reviewing his restaurant and the strange fortune it had brought to him.

Lisbon

Coronavirus Diary: A Quarantine Garden in Lisbon

Rua Antero de Quental is a short street that runs uphill from Avenida Almirante Reis – within whiffing distance of the famous Cervejaria Ramiro – to the pale yellow palace housing the Italian Embassy. Handsome 19th century buildings in various states of disrepair line both sides of the street. It’s a shortcut up to Campo Martires da Patria and over toward Avenida Liberdade so it gets a lot of thru traffic. A couple of haggard men stand at the bottom of the street waving people in toward parking spots up the street. At night, sometimes, African mestres leave flyers tucked under the windshield wipers of cars that offer remedies to all sorts of ailments. I collect these flyers.

Istanbul

Fatih Sarmacısı: A Jelly Roll with an Ottoman Soul

Settling into our first cross-country journey in Turkey many years ago, we were pleasantly surprised by the comforts of Turkish bus travel. The young garson wore a proper uniform and dribbled cologne onto our hands every hour or so. Tea was served regularly, accompanied by one of our early Turkish culinary discoveries, Eti brand pop kek – those unctuous and delicious cakes frosted or stuffed with everything from raisins to chocolate – the Anatolian Twinkie. Call us heathens, but we love them. We’ve tried many traditional Turkish cakes, but none we encountered measured up to the beloved pop kek. That is, until one recent visit to Fatih Sarmacısı, an Ottoman-era shop making our new favorite cake, sarma (the word means “wrapped” or “rolled up” in Turkish).

Lisbon

Jesus é Goês: What's Goan On

Order a plate of vindaloo in one of the many Goan restaurants around Lisbon and your local friend at the table may point out that the origin of this dish is, in fact, Portuguese. Even the name can be decoded back to the Portuguese vinho d’alhos (wine and garlic), he’ll say. But let’s be honest here, amigo, vinho d’alhos has about as much to do with Goan vindaloo as the croissant does with the cronut. Vinho d’alhos may have sailed off to Goa along with Vasco da Gama in the 15th century, but when it returned to Lisbon with Goan migrants in the 1960s and 70s, something had changed. It had gone Goan.

Naples

Napoli Pizza: A Heavenly Treat

We caught these sisters enjoying Naples' famous pizza alongside a cold Peroni. Such simple yet brilliant delicacies can be sampled on our culinary walk in the city. 

Naples

Scenes From a Naples Tripe Shop

It was a great disappointment for Francesco, owner of this tripe shop in Naples, to learn that the website, Tripadvisor, was not just about entrails. Wouldn’t it be great if it were?

Lisbon

Lunch Hour on the Lisbon Docks

The lunch hour winds down (or starts up), among the stevedores in the Lisbon docks. This is a sight one is likely to encounter on our Song of the Sea walk.

Istanbul

Al Ahdab: Groceries for the Homesick

(Editor's Note: In honor of the immigrants and refugees who have made their new home a better place for us all, this week we are running some of our favorite archived stories about those who have left a culinary mark on their adopted land.) On a recent sunny afternoon at the tiny Al Ahdab market, a wedge of light slashed through the front windows illuminating posters for condensed milk in Arabic script and one of an energy drink called Hell. The shop is easy to miss, tucked under the slope of Sarı Musa Sokak, which dips quickly from Millet Caddesi – the arterial avenue home to Istanbul’s Little Syria. By the front door was a rack of Cow Brand ghee, in large tin cans stacked like motor oil at a gas station.

Lisbon

Cape Verdean Grog and Grub in Lisbon

Senhor Domingo serves up a wicked homemade Cape Verde “grog” from his simple restaurant in central Lisbon. The toast goes to him, for cranking up the morna, stirring up the cachupa and making this corner of the city a bit more Cape Verdean. We’re all better for it.

Istanbul

Can Ocakbaşı: Closer to the Hearth

Istanbul’s Aksaray district is a difficult place to get to know. It's probably the most diverse district in all of Turkey and with a very high turnover rate. Those Georgian ladies you saw dragging an overstuffed plaid duffel down Buyuk Langa Caddesi yesterday? They might be halfway to Batumi by now. The Syrian family by the bus stop? They may be on their way to meet a man in Izmir about a boat. Who knows? Aksaray’s unknowableness makes some locals uneasy; there's got to be mischief in all that motion, with all of those foreigners. Such is the stigma of Aksaray, den of thieves.

Istanbul

Koco: Quest for the Holy Grill

Reviewers are often tempted into using metaphors that portray the restaurant as a sacred place -- the sushi temple, a t-bone pilgrimage, chili-cheese fry heaven. But in Istanbul’s Moda district on the Asian shore, we’ve found a praiseworthy fish restaurant that could justifiably be described as a shrine – literally. For more than 50 years, a local Greek family has been serving saints and sinners alike at Koco, a rambling seaside fish house situated atop an ayazma, or sacred spring. There’s meze and fresh grilled fish with raki upstairs, candles and a shot of holy water downstairs. Judging by the size of the dining room, Koco is preferred by very large groups. One recent weeknight, though, there were just enough customers to fill in the tables lined along the windows. The view of the old Moda ferry dock and the Marmara Sea from the window side of the room is excellent but leaves you leagues from the coat check where the staff hangs on a slow night.