Istanbul

Çukur Meyhane: When Liver Met Hamsi

Çukur Meyhane, a small, slightly shabby basement meyhane in Beyoğlu’s Galatasaray area, certainly does not look like the kind of place with any shining stars on the menu. On one of our very first visits, the floor seemed to be covered in a mixture of sawdust, table scraps and some cigarette ash. The tiny open kitchen occupies one corner, while the VIP table – where a group of old-timers can be found watching horse races on TV, scratching at racing forms, cursing and cheering – takes up a slightly larger area. A good bit of the other half of the room is home to a giant ornamental wooden beer barrel.

Istanbul

Bean Week: Istanbul's Top 5 Beaneries (Updated)

Istanbul’s eaters are spoiled by opportunities to eat great beans – and in the Turkish kitchen that means white beans, in particular, and if you’re lucky, the şeker fasulye type grown in Eastern Turkey’s İspir region. We’ve tried countless subtle variations on roughly the same recipe and, wiping mouth on sleeve after a bowl, declared that we could eat beans every single day of the week. We’ve spent a lot of time comparing almost identical-tasting Black Sea-style beans and hunted down those that are harder to categorize. Taking part in the bean discourse is a great pleasure of ours and we are not alone in doing so. Turkish newspapers regularly run features analyzing the baked bean, featuring inserts ranking the best beans, nationally, by a panel of judges. It’s a gas. In this roundup we’ve compiled our favorite beans in different styles. Though the gold standard achieved by standouts Hüsrev and Fasuli is widely agreed to be the best in show, we’ve included a couple of quirky beaneries in our list of favorites, because, in reality, you can’t eat the same beans every day.

Istanbul

Öz Kilis: Kebab That Deserves to Be Panned

In Turkish popular lore, the residents of Kilis, a town in Southeast Turkey near the Syrian border, are known for two things: kebab-making and smuggling. We haven’t been to Kilis, so we can’t vouch for the smuggling bit (although these days the town is featured regularly in the headlines as a hub for fighters being hustled across the border into Syria). But based on the food we’ve tried at Öz Kilis, a wonderful little spot on a quiet backstreet in Fatih run by two Kilis natives, we can report that the kebab-making reputation is well-deserved. Not just any kebab, mind you. Clearly an unorthodox and clever lot, the people of Kilis have a distinctly different approach to cooking meat. While a wide swath of humanity stretching from the Balkans to the Hindu Kush makes their kebabs by putting meat on a skewer and cooking it over a fire, the people of Kilis are famous for their “pan kebab,” a thin disc of ground meat that is cooked in a shallow metal dish that’s put in the oven.

Istanbul

Özbek Sofrası: A Higher Plov

In the former Soviet Central Asian republics, the boilerplate restaurant menu consists of plov, lagman, shashlik and samsa. Tired-looking Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Tajik establishments all serve up the same limp noodles and oily rice with a shrug – it’s their job. In the markets of Samarkand, Osh and Almaty, we found some exciting exceptions to this rule but, generally, restaurants in the region tend to successfully obscure the fact that Central Asian food, when cooked with passion, can be a riot of the senses. In Central Asia, according to regional specialist Sean Roberts, culinary traditions have customarily been preserved by a master/apprentice system that mainly existed outside restaurants. Monumental occasions like weddings and funerals in Uzbekistan often involve several hundred guests eating multiple meals. For this, an usta is called in from his day job, like Clark Kent from the newsroom.

Istanbul

Hail Caesar's: Mushroom Hunting in Istanbul's Forests

Editor's note: We're celebrating Mushroom Week at Culinary Backstreets, and today's installment takes us to Istanbul's Belgrade Forest, where Turkey's leading wild mushroom expert has found some remarkable fungus specimens. “This would be front-page news in France!” Jilber raved, darting off between tall chestnut trees and oaks, obscured by a hazy steam that seemed to hang in the forest like a gauzy Halloween decoration. He looked over each shoulder and all around him where it seemed he was surrounded by golf balls, shanked off and forgotten in the rough.

Istanbul

Kristal Ocakbaşı: The People's House

Outside of Kristal Ocakbaşı, a small grill joint tucked away on a side street in the Pangaltı neighborhood, Obama sat greeting the regulars who streamed in to watch a soccer game while feasting on kebab. “What’s the news, Obama?” asked one man with shoulder-length white hair. “Selam aleykum, Obama,” said another. One woman patted him on the head and baby talked to him, calling him by the affectionate nickname “Obiş.” Though we’d never heard such fond regard for the American president, Obama – the tanker-sized street dog of Eşref Efendi Sokak – took it in stride, yawning lazily. It was just another Monday night among his adoring constituents.

Istanbul

Big-Time Baklava: The Best Spots for Gaziantep’s Renowned Sweet

Editor’s note: To celebrate Ramazan Bayramı, also called Şeker Bayramı, the three-day holiday at the end of the holy month of Ramadan, we are republishing this 2014 article about our favorite spots for baklava – sweets are an integral part of the festivities, which began on May 13 this year. Turkey’s European Union membership bid may be stuck in the mud, but a different dynamic is at work on the food front. To wit: the European Commission has granted Gaziantep baklava a spot on its list of protected designations of origin and geographical indications. It’s the first Turkish product and the 16th non-EU food to make it on the list. In honor of this much-deserved recognition, we’ve put together our own list of favorite places to get baklava in Istanbul and Gaziantep.

Istanbul

Erzincan Tandır Ekmeği: Village Loaves for City Folks

In the Kurtuluş district of Istanbul, we’ve lately been exploring links to older, nearly lost Istanbul culinary traditions. Spending time in the sweetshops, milk bars and şarküteri of this district, we’ve seen a glimmer, if faded, of the “Old Istanbul” that people remember from the 1950s and '60s, when the city’s historic minorities – Greeks, Armenians and Jews – played a prominent role in the culinary scene of the city. It’s a complex and endlessly fascinating subject, one that never fails to spark our curiosity. And then we were distracted by the smell of fresh bread. Fresh lavaş, to be more specific, being hoisted out of a fiery hole in the floor on a blackened hook by the sturdy Gül Hanım.

Istanbul

Kenan Usta Ocakbaşı: Skewers at an Exhibition

If Istanbul had a city museum, in the 20th-century exhibition we’d expect to walk into a life-sized recreation of Kenan Usta Ocakbaşı, a seminal grill joint in the Beyoğlu district. As visitors descended a few steps into the exhibition, sensors would trigger the harsh light of fluorescent bulbs overhead, illuminating a room covered in photographs of husky men with mustaches posing with a stout man in an apron, grill master Kenan Usta. The somber, groaning warble of the great Arabesque singer Müslüm Gürses would cue up in the visitors’ rented headsets and ducts inside the replica grill would belch out smoke scented authentically by grilled meat.

Istanbul

Bodrum Mantı: Turkish Dumpling Delight

From Western China all the way to Istanbul, Turkic people roll out dough, fold it into small pouches, boil it and call it mantı. When it comes to dumplings, Turkish tradition dictates that the tortellini-like mantı be no larger than peanut-sized. With its unusually large (and sometimes fried) dumplings, Bodrum Mantı & Café has taken traditional Turkish mantı to soaring new heights, of which we strongly approve.

Istanbul

“I’ve Come and I'm Gone”: A Tribute to Istanbul’s Street Vendors

Metin Akdemir is a filmmaker based in Istanbul. In 2011 he made a short film about street vendors in the city. The film, “Ben Geldim Gidiyorum” (“I’ve Come and I’m Gone”), won several awards in Turkish and international film festivals, and we think it’s a very valuable piece of work that captures a side of Istanbul’s culture that is slowly disappearing.

Istanbul

Best Bites 2015: Istanbul

Editor’s note: To give 2015 a proper send-off, we’re taking a look back at all our favorite eating experiences this year. Hamo’nun Yeri The nohut dürüm, a simple wrap of mashed chickpeas, peppers, parsley and spices, may be a popular breakfast choice in certain districts of the southeastern province of Gaziantep, but we'll eat it anytime and are prepared to travel far and wide to do so, as this treat is by no means common in Istanbul. Hamo'nun Yeri is located in Güngören, a densely packed working-class district located well outside the radar of tourists and more affluent Istanbulites. Made with bread hot out of the oven from the family's bakery down the block, the dürüm – and a chat with the friendly Gül brothers – is more than worth the trip. Address: Güngören Merkez Mah., İkbal Sokak 9/B, Köyiçi Telephone: +90 535 016 0316 Hours: 7am-10pm —Paul Osterlund

Istanbul

Mari: The Cosmopolitan

Editor's note: The chef and owners of Mekan have moved on to a new location, which they've named Mari. We're sorry to report that Mekan itself has since gone downhill. In the great multicultural Anatolian kitchen, questions about the ethnic or national origins of foods are often cause for forks and knives to fly. A porridge called keşkek is a hot-button diplomatic issue between Turkey and Armenia, and we won’t even get started on the ongoing baklava debate. So what to make of this cuisine that draws influences from every corner of the former Ottoman lands, a territory stretching from the Balkans to North Africa? The answer might be in a simple term that’s becoming popular among Turkey’s minorities. The word Türkiyeli means “of Turkey” and differs significantly (and quite intentionally) from the word Türk, which often adds ethno-religious shades to nationality.

Istanbul

Osman’s Truck:

We generally wouldn’t recommend pulling yourself up into the back of a broken-down truck with no license plates that’s sitting in an empty lot down by the river, but Osman’s truck offers a rare glimpse of Istanbul if there really were no rules, and, not to mention, great views of the Golden Horn. In the back of Osman’s truck, with the winter sun reflecting off of the Golden Horn just 20 feet from the hitch, the subject of discussion on a recent afternoon was freedom. “Commerce has ruined the free spaces, the nature within this city,” said Osman from behind the counter, located in the back of the covered truck’s cargo area, now converted into a cozy café, with low tables and padded benches. “There’s no pleasure in it!” added Mehmet, whose role here seemed to fall between maitre d’ and mascot.

Istanbul

A (Shady) Place in the Sun:

Summer months in Istanbul can be oppressively hot. In a city that seems more prone to laying asphalt than planting trees, a public place in the shade is hard to find. Though many Istanbulites escape to the green spaces outside of the city on weekends, we’ve compiled a few inner-city options for the urban picnicker looking for a break from the heat. First you’ll have to assemble the picnic basket. For its bountiful shopping options and convenience, we suggest doing so in the Cihangir neighborhood of Beyoğlu. In addition to a Carrefour supermarket, which is useful for certain picnic essentials, this area also has a few gourmet shops and fruit stands that easily fill the basket.

Istanbul

Heyamola Ada Lokantası:

Editor’s note: This post was written by “Meliz,” an intrepid explorer of Istanbul’s culinary backstreets and frequent Istanbul Eats guest contributor who would like to keep her anonymity. While the Princes’ Islands make for a great escape from the city, it used to be hard to think of them as a culinary destination. That is, until Heyamola Ada Lokantası opened. The restaurant is a perfect storm of inspired food, chill ambiance and small-label Turkish wines, all at ridiculously low prices. Heyamola is reason in and of itself to organize a day trip to the islands, and if you’re already planning your island adventure, the place is a compelling argument for jumping off the ferry at Heybeli Island, often overlooked in favor of the more popular Büyükada.

Istanbul

Baba Söğüş: 100% Organ-ic

The story starts with two successful business executives, dreaming of a drastic change in their lives. They turn to what they love, eating, and find a gaping hole in Istanbul’s restaurant scene. Until just a few years ago, you’d know where this story was heading – a research trip to Naples or Bangkok, followed by the opening of a limp pasta restaurant in the environs of İstinye Park or some other upscale shopping mall. But not this time. The heroes of our story set their sights on the city of Izmir and its offal-laden cuisine. Izmir folk love kelle söğüş (boiled sheep’s head, served cold) and kelle tandır (a roasted version). While in Istanbul these specialties are largely a novelty, in the busy downtown markets of Izmir you’re more likely to come across kelle than kebab. Your friends from Izmir will never post a photo of a sheep’s head on their Facebook page with a freaked-out-looking emoticon because, to them, tucking into a sheep’s head lunch is just everyday business as usual. And, in Istanbul, it seems, the Izmir way of lunch could be catching on.

Istanbul

The Salepçi of Sütçüler: The Hard Life of a Sweet Trade

By the name of the place, you’d expect the Sütçüler (“Milkmen” in English) district near Isparta in southern Turkey to be a dairyland paradise, thick on the ground with men carrying buckets sloshing fresh milk, cheese wheels stacked in cool dark sheds, verdant hills freckled with cows. But there are no milkmen in Sütçüler, at least not in the wintertime. The area’s name actually has nothing to do with anything going on in Sütçüler itself.

Istanbul

Ceyhan Ocakbaşı: Wings of Industry

In many parts of Istanbul, it’s not unusual to reside amidst industry in progress. It could be a workshop in your building’s basement where fire extinguishers are refilled, a copper pot re-tinning enterprise just outside your front door or a knockoff Fendi purse assembly line you catch a surprising glimpse of as you look across the breezeway into an adjacent building. Despite zoning laws, the age-old tradition of living alongside the clang of the forge and the whir of heavy instruments is still a reality in Istanbul. And as hard as it may be to weed out all of these workshops, efforts over the past 40 years to do so are not without results.

Istanbul

İnciraltı: Meyhane Time Machine

We like to think of İnciraltı, a laid-back meyhane in the sleepy Bosphorus-side Beylerbeyi neighborhood, as a destination restaurant – not so much because of the food, but because of the destination itself. Not that there’s anything wrong with the food here, which is reliably well made. The meze tray at İnciraltı (which means “under the fig tree” in Turkish) is brought to your table carrying all the classics, plus a few welcome and tasty surprises, such as the zingy brined twigs of the caper plant and a sea bass fillet that has been cured in a piquant sauce redolent of curry.

Istanbul

Sıdıka: Last Night a Meze Saved Our Lives

It has been years now since we were first tipped to Sıdıka. The W Hotel had just opened in the splashy Akaretler rowhouse development. Vogue, the rooftop sushi lounge, was still in style. The Shangri-La hotel was under construction down on the waterfront, and it was rumored that some rooms would have Bosphorus views below sea level. Beşiktaş, long the bastion of cheap draft beer joints and university student flatshares, was having some growing pains.

Istanbul

CB Book Club: Aylin Öney Tan’s A Taste of Sun & Fire

For many (us here at Culinary Backstreets included), the city of Gaziantep is without a doubt the culinary mecca of Turkey. Located not far from Turkey’s southern border, a meeting point between the Arab Middle East and Turkish Anatolia, Gaziantep over the centuries has developed a culinary culture that is deeply rooted in the rhythm of the agricultural lands surrounding it and that is maintained with great pride and honor by the city’s cooks and food makers. Gaziantep is also the source for many of Turkish cuisine’s iconic dishes – the city’s famous baklava is without compare and its kebabs are truly works of art, the standard by which all others are measured.

Istanbul

Kelle: Face Off

Don’t people just love to fight about food? Punch-ups over which city makes the best pizza, brawls about what’s the right way to barbecue. Louis and Ella nearly called the whole thing off over the pronunciation of the word “tomato.” In this pugilistic spirit, we took our place at a couple of stools at our favorite back of the fish market corner bar, Asmaaltı, from which to call one of the great barroom debates of these parts: Is a sheep’s head, or kelle, more tasty when boiled and served chilled or roasted and served hot?

Istanbul

Cuma Usta: Anatolian Snow Cone

Standing behind the counter at his small bici bici shop in Gökalp Mahallesi, a neighborhood in the Zeytinburnu district of Istanbul, Cuma Usta recalls the first time he headed up into the mountains with his uncles in search of wild ice, one of the key ingredients in this Turkish snow cone treat sold from street carts throughout southern Turkey. His uncles had gone up in the winter and cut large slabs of ice from the mountaintop, wrapped it in old blankets and hauled it off with a donkey to a nearby cave. In July, with young Cuma – just being introduced to the ways of bici bici – in tow, they headed back to the cave to collect the ice. It took a couple of hours by car, as he recalled, and the ride back to Adana, vehicle loaded with the frozen bounty, was nice and chilly. Then they’d use that ice to make the summertime street food favorite bici bici (pronounced like the disco-era band of brothers from Australia) and sell it from pushcarts. According to tradition, a bici bici master is, firstly, a harvester of ice.

Istanbul

CB on the Road: Join Us in Gaziantep!

We are very happy to announce that in May we’ll be offering a springtime edition of “Culinary Secrets of Gaziantep,” our three-day eating and hands-on cooking adventure in Turkey’s gastronomic mecca. An ancient city not far from Turkey’s southern border, a meeting point between the Arab Middle East and Turkish Anatolia, Gaziantep over the centuries has developed a culinary culture that is deeply rooted in the rhythm of the agricultural lands surrounding it and that is maintained with great pride and honor by the city’s cooks and food makers. Gaziantep is also the source for many of Turkish cuisine’s iconic dishes – the city’s famous baklava is without compare and its kebabs are truly works of art, the standard by which all others are measured.

Istanbul

Best Bites of 2014: Istanbul

Editor’s note: To cap off our annual review of the year’s best eating experiences, we’ve unleashed our imaginations to create the Turkish food court of our dreams. After a period of protest, we finally broke down and visited the Zorlu Center, a new, high-profile shopping mall in Istanbul and a showcase of international brand names, from Fendi to Jamie Oliver. Our initial attraction was the promise of a particularly well-kept playground, but while we were there, we visited Eataly, the all-Italian culinary emporium.

Istanbul

Pamuk Usta’s Nohut Dürüm: Gonzo Garbanzo

Following a tip, we set out one morning to find Pamuk Usta, a legend among the chickpea breakfast-wrap-eating Antep-Birecik-Nizip diaspora of Istanbul.

Istanbul

Hail Caesar's: Mushroom Hunting in Istanbul's Forests

Editor's note: We're celebrating Mushroom Week at Culinary Backstreets, and today's installment takes us to Istanbul's Belgrade Forest, where Turkey's leading wild mushroom expert has found some remarkable fungus specimens.

Istanbul

Mandabatmaz: Grounds for Celebration

It’s a dirty secret nobody wants to talk about, but let’s put it out there: finding a good cup of Turkish coffee in Turkey can sometimes be very difficult. Thin and watery, rather than thick and viscous, is frequently the order of the day. This is no small matter, akin to complaining about the quality of the French toast in France or about finding stale danishes in Denmark. Turkey, after all, is the land that, during Ottoman times, helped introduce coffee to the rest of Europe. When it comes to making Turkish coffee, Turkey needs to represent.

Istanbul

CB on the Road: Island Hopping Fit for a Prince

Editor's note: We are sad to report that SofrAda has closed. One of our favorite spots to make a quick summer getaway from Istanbul is the idyllic car-free and forested paradise of the Princes’ Islands, located just a short ferry ride away from the city. Here’s where you should eat when you get there.

Istanbul

CB on the Road: Büyükada Hi-Lo

If it’s because of showing visitors around or simply a desire to get away from the city for the day, we can usually count on at least one visit a summer to Büyükada, the largest of the Princes’ Islands. But as much as we like looking at the car-free island’s Victorian mansions and visiting its quiet, forested backside, when it comes time to eat on Büyükada, we feel like we’re stuck inside an airport, forced to eat mediocre food at outrageous prices. (Although we very much like the food at Kıyı, a seaside restaurant on the island that we’ve previously recommended, even a casual dinner there ends up costing more than what one would like.)

Istanbul

Turkistan Uygur Lokantası: Food from the Noodlelands

Anyone who has spent time in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia (or, “the ’Stans”) will have developed a deep and lasting appreciation for the cuisine of the Uighur, a Turkic people spread across the region whose homeland, Uygurstan, lies across the border in western China.

Istanbul

Çay Times: The Everyday Ritual of Turkish Tea

Tea is to Turkey what fizzy, watery beer is to Milwaukee - consumed in copious amounts, a desired chemical reaction takes place, but its real value lies not in the taste but in the ritual of swilling. Without noticing it, tea has snuck its way into daily life for us. We never really enjoyed the flavor of standard Turkish tea, but it is part and parcel of the rich Turkish experience. In Kars, memorably, we guzzled it from a pockmarked, coal-fired samovar stamped with a Russian crest as we sat in the shade beside a river. In the eastern Black Sea, it was the offer of a tea that brought us into a village çayhane, where we eavesdropped on the local men speaking their Pontic Greek dialect, as they warmed their feet around a stove. Tea unlocks doors.

Istanbul

CB on the Road: Springtime with Antep's Top (Home) Chef

The cuisine of Antep deserves every bit of the praise it receives. In the southeastern city known as the gastronomic temple of Turkey, the world’s most refined kebab traditions are obsessively guarded by a cadre of traditional ustas in the local grilling institutions. Baklava workshops are steeped in an odd mixture of science and voodoo that would titillate Willy Wonka himself. But coming down from a grilled meat and sweets binge, the body wants dolma, pilav, börek and çorba – the home-style food that is strangely absent in Antep’s restaurants.

Istanbul

CB on the Road: Getting Souped Up at Gaziantep's Metanet

It is impossible to sleep late in Gaziantep, despite the tranquility of the historic quarter, the calming, hunker-in-and-go-back-to-sleep effect of the hotel room’s thick stone walls and the comforting, dusty smell of antique furniture. Even the promise of a nice breakfast spread served between 7:30 and 10 a.m. could not keep us from hitting this ancient southeastern Turkish city’s streets. At 6 a.m., we were rambling through Gaziantep’s coppersmiths’ bazaar. As we walked by, the metal shutters of spice shops were thrown open in a clattering roar, whooshing an aromatic cloud into our path. Street sweepers worked their beat with twiggy, homemade-looking brooms as groups of shopkeepers lingered over the first of many more teas and smokes at the corner çayhane. Exiting another artery of covered bazaars, we stepped out into bright morning light, which shot through the brooms of street sweepers at rest, creating crazy mangrove-like shadows on the sidewalk. We were close now, so close we could smell it.

Istanbul

Spring (Food) Break 2014: Istanbul

With all of the anticipation of local elections in March, the scandalous graft-laden tapes leaked via social media, the communication fog brought on by the ban of Twitter and YouTube and the subsequent call for a vote recount in many cities, this city's stomach had good reason to be distracted. But one cannot survive on a diet of daily news alone. In case you all forgot, Spring is here.

Istanbul

Erzincan Tandır Ekmeği: Village Loaves for City Folks

In the Kurtuluş district of Istanbul, we’ve lately been exploring links to older, nearly lost Istanbul culinary traditions. Spending time in the sweetshops, milk bars and şarküteri of this district, we’ve seen a glimmer, if faded, of the “Old Istanbul” that people remember from the 1950s and '60s, when the city’s historic minorities – Greeks, Armenians and Jews – played a prominent role in the culinary scene of the city. It’s a complex and endlessly fascinating subject, one that never fails to spark our curiosity. And then we were distracted by the smell of fresh bread. Fresh lavaş, to be more specific, being hoisted out of a fiery hole in the floor on a blackened hook by the sturdy Gül Hanım.

Istanbul

Mourning in Istanbul: The Bread of Political Affliction

Since coming to Istanbul more than a decade ago, we have come to associate a loaf of the city’s iconic crusty white bread with satisfying lunches in an esnaf lokantası, using chunks of the humble loaf to sop up whatever was left on our plate. Since Tuesday, though, a loaf of bread has become something else in Istanbul: a symbol of both mourning and protest.

Istanbul

Grills and Thrills: Istanbul's Top 5 Kebab Restaurants

If there are an estimated 17 million souls in Istanbul, then there are at least that many opinions on the best kebab house in town. There are stodgy oak-paneled rooms with country-club appeal, where well-dressed businessmen marvel at heaping plates of delicious grilled meat. And there are 24/7 hole-in-the-walls, where lines form out the door for kebab that is just as tasty and expertly cooked.

Istanbul

The Salepçi of Sütçüler: The Hard Life of a Sweet Trade

By the name of the place, you’d expect the Sütçüler (“Milkmen” in English) district near Isparta in southern Turkey to be a dairyland paradise, thick on the ground with men carrying buckets sloshing fresh milk, cheese wheels stacked in cool dark sheds, verdant hills freckled with cows. But there are no milkmen in Sütçüler, at least not in the wintertime. The area’s name actually has nothing to do with anything going on in Sütçüler itself.

Istanbul

Vefa Boza: Strange Brew

Editor's note: In a recent New York Times article, Joshua Hammer wrote about a tour that Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk gave him through the author's native city and his personal history there. We were delighted to read that one of Pamuk's favorite places is Vefa Bozacısı, which is one of ours too (and also a stop on the Old City culinary walk). After our first taste, we were not quite ready to sing the praises of boza, a thick, almost pudding-like drink made from fermented millet. But the experience stuck with us. What is that flavor? Something like cross between Russian kvass (a fermented drink made from rye bread) and applesauce may be the best way to describe it. As it did to us, the drink may haunt you, much like the call of the itinerant boza vendors who wander the streets of Istanbul during the winter months calling out a long, mournful “booooo-zahhh.”

Istanbul

Gülbi's Cafe: Diaspora Dumplings

“I’m not a missionary, but I am not doing this just to make a profit. People must see that there is mantı outside of Kayseri, there’s Crimean Tatar mantı, as well,” explained Gülben Resuloğlu, in front of her restaurant in the leafy Feneryolu district of Istanbul’s Asian Side.If Martha Stewart were in the mantı (also known as “Turkish ravioli”) business, her place would look just like Gülbi’s – meticulously decorated in pastels, white and floral prints. Everything matched, even the two neatly dressed women who welcomed us: Gülben (the Gülbi in question) and her sister, Leyla. But kept just behind tidy appearances, we discovered, is the pain of being Tatar. We’re convinced that this identity, which was forged in the fire of dispersal and diaspora, made the food taste better.

Istanbul

Best Bites of 2013: Istanbul

Editor’s note: This is the final installment of “Best Bites of 2013,” a roundup of our top culinary experiences over the last year. Be sure to check out the "best bites" in all the other cities CB covers. Breakfast in Erzincan We were strangers in a strange land – eastern Turkey’s Erzincan, to be exact – and Yalçın Kaya welcomed us into his cheese shop with such gracious fervor that it didn’t surprise us to find out that this Anatolian cheesemonger moonlights as an imam.

Istanbul

CB on the Road: In Eastern Turkey's Yogurtlands

Like many other Central Anatolian cities, Erzincan is one of those places with very little there there. The natural setting – on a high plateau and ringed by craggy peaks – is promising, but the town itself feels like it’s been scrubbed clean of all traces of history or local distinctiveness, its streets lined with characterless buildings painted in fading pastels, their ground floors occupied by the same furniture and supermarket chains found in every other city in the Turkish heartland. Erzincan does have one thing going for it, though: it’s the kind of place where you can land at the airport, hop into a waiting taxi and ask your driver to take you to the local cheese sellers’ bazaar, and he’ll take you straight there, no questions asked, as if it’s the most natural request he could get.

Istanbul

Salep: Pure and Uncut

When we last visited Cemal Bey, he was sitting behind a desk in a small, bare office on the second floor of a decrepit building near the Egyptian Bazaar in the city’s old quarter (he has since moved). Three large burlap sacks filled with what look like jumbo-sized yellow raisins are all that adorn the room. That and a fax machine. The window behind him frames one of Istanbul’s many transfixing cityscapes – the Golden Horn stretching out under the Galata Bridge where it meets the Bosphorus and the Marmara Sea, departing ferries churning the water white – but Cemal keeps his eye on a fax that’s coming in.

Istanbul

Hamsi: Every Which Way

As a chill sets in and heavy clouds roll over Istanbul, turning the Bosphorus battleship gray, we say goodbye to the luscious strawberries and blood-red tomatoes in the market. Fall marks the start of hamsi season, a time when small anchovies fill the nets of fishing boats on the Black Sea coast, squirming their way – with all of the country’s anticipation – onto grills and into pans and ovens throughout Turkey. The colder and rainier it gets, the fatter and cheaper the hamsi become.

Istanbul

İnebolu Pazarı: Shroomin' à la Turca

“You can eat these raw, efendim!” shouted Aziz Bey to a suspicious woman dressed in a headscarf of sharp geometric designs and a denim duster. “Don’t be scared!” he said, ripping the cap off of a raw kokulu cincire mushroom with his teeth and chewing it in an exaggerated, open-mouthed way to show that there were no tricks. “Mis gibi!” he said, using a phrase that is more frequently printed on laundry detergent bottles or uttered by mothers doting over infants. “Fragrant!” In Turkey, many people assign much of what happens throughout the day to kismet, or fate, but when eating wild mushrooms you might be tempting it. Every year, it seems, local papers report on someone’s demise by mushrooms, which explained why the woman in the duster was reluctant to finish the transaction.

Istanbul

Yedikule: An Istanbul Neighborhood’s Bitter Harvest

Foreigners living in Istanbul often say they love the place for its history, while some say it’s the people who make it special. We find life here mystifying for the unpredictable dialogue between the two, the way 15 million or so people reconcile their daily lives with this city’s rich past. To live inside this beautiful crash course is invigorating and, at the same time, a heartbreaking experience. Where else does the elegant silhouette of migratory storks cross a skyline of construction cranes busy laying a metro tube to connect two continents, a project whose progress was stalled by the unexpected discovery of one of the richest underwater archaeological finds ever, a lost port full of ancient boats filled with age-old cargo? Walking these streets, every day we see something so fabulous that it takes our breath away, just as we spot something around the corner threatening to smash it.

Istanbul

Cibalikapı Balıkçısı: Have Your Meze and Eat It Too

On a night out in Istanbul, we often find ourselves forced to make sacrifices in one or more categories of the overall dining experience. Great food at reasonable prices will surely be laid out in a room decorated in Anatolian kitsch.

Istanbul

Kalpazankaya Restaurant: Paradise Found

One of the great joys of spring and summertime in Istanbul is the chance to get away for a day to one of the Princes’ Islands, the car-free and forested archipelago that is a short ferry ride away from the city. The only downside to an island hop is actually getting there. As soon as spring makes its first appearance in Istanbul, the hordes descend on the mainland’s ferry terminal, filling the boats to beyond capacity (at least on the weekends). With your neighbor’s picnic basket sticking into your ribs, the boat ride to the islands is usually less of a pleasure cruise and something more resembling those scenes in natural disaster or science fiction films where a frantic population is forced to huddle together after barely escaping their city’s demise.