Istanbul

Perazin: That Old Meyhane Magic

Update: This spot is sadly no longer open. In an opinion piece published recently in the Latitude blog of The New York Times, veteran Turkey correspondent Andrew Finkel’s brutally honest appraisal of the state of “New Turkish Cuisine” called much of Istanbul’s restaurant establishment – down to the customers – into question. We’ve had similar misgivings after meals in some upscale nouveau meyhanes where fussy food and too much attention to interior design end up spoiling an atmosphere that is supposed to be fun.

Istanbul

Heyamola Ada Lokantası: Island Time

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.

Istanbul

Siirt Şeref Büryan Kebap Salonu: The Lamb Underground

Kadınlar Pazarı – a pleasant, pedestrian-only square in Istanbul’s Fatih neighborhood – is the closest thing the city has to a “Little Kurdistan.” The area is populated by migrants from Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast region, and small market stalls and butcher shops selling honey, cheeses, spices and other goodies from the region surround the square. Visiting the atmospheric area is a great way to get a taste of Southeast Turkey without having to leave Istanbul.

Istanbul

Spring (Food) Break 2013: Istanbul

Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of “Spring (Food) Break 2013,” featuring our favorite foods of the spring season in each city Culinary Backstreets covers. This year’s Nevruz celebration, an ancient welcoming of spring, may be remembered for its political significance in which a peace deal was struck between Turkish leaders and Kurdish rebels. But once the shoulder-shrugging, line-dancing, fire-jumping and ululating are over, the real bounty of the season will continue to be celebrated all over Turkey and in many Istanbul restaurants, from the chic to the shabby.

Istanbul

Istanbul’s Top 3 Lahmacun Makers

Lahmacun is one of those mysterious foods where a lot is created with so little. It checks all of the boxes of a perfect savory snack: crispy, oven-fired crust, light and spicy meat spread, a fresh green garnish and a tangy spray from a lemon. It’s like an artisanal pizza with a Middle Eastern topping wrapped around a side salad – for the cost of a shoeshine.

Istanbul

Gazoz: Turkish Fizzardry

In a 2003 TV commercial for Cola Turka, the actor Chevy Chase was seen speaking Turkish and then sporting a moustache, after taking just one sip of the intended challenger of Coke in this country. This sensational ad – which riffed on the old theme of American cultural imperialism through its number-one agent, Coca-Cola – was the first time that Turkish soft drinks caught our attention. Though we didn’t take to the overly sweet Cola Turka, we did start looking beyond, to its local brethren in the market: gazoz, a world of nearly extinct Turkish carbonated drink brands with a fanatical following.

Istanbul

Meşhur Filibe Köftecisi: Keeping Their Eye on the Meatball

Where we come from, flipping burgers is a time-honored tradition among pimply teenagers looking for a summer job and troubled short-order cooks looking for a place to land in between firings. It’s work that promises mobility, not stability. But don’t tell that to Ziver Usta, who’s been turning the köfte – something like Turkey’s equivalent of the hamburger – at the grill of the shoe-box-sized Meşhur Filibe Köftecisi in Sirkeci for the last 30 years. The dough-faced Ziver, in his early fifties, is actually the restaurant’s junior employee – “head waiter” Mehmet has been there for 40 years – but his long tenure means he’s only one of a select handful of grill masters who have worked at Filibe over the course of its 100-year history.

Istanbul

Istanbul’s Burger Battle Goes International

Update: Shake shack and Fatburger are sadly no longer open. As chronicled by Istanbul Eats, the Tünel end of Istanbul’s famed İstiklal boulevard was some two years ago the site of a heated burger war. It all started when a former Turkish basketball-player-turned-restaurateur who had spent time studying in California opened up Mano Burger, a mostly successful recreation of the kind of burger joints the owner frequented in the United States.

Istanbul

Mustafa Amca: Soul Proprietor

The Turkish proverb “At, avrat, silah ödünç verilmez” (“neither horse, wife nor weapon should be lent”) is sometimes repeated as a way to recall the nomadic warrior past of the Turks. The primal Turkish essentials are clearly stated, but what about the çay bardağı, the tea glass that has become such a ubiquitous Turkish icon? Reading the 17th-century works of Evliya Çelebi, the Ottoman Rick Steves, you’d expect to find descriptions of medieval tea jockeys swinging trays filled with those tulip-shaped glasses through the alleyways of the Old City. Right?

Istanbul

Beşaltı Kirvem Tantuni: Turkish for “Taquería”?

One of the big downsides to Istanbul’s otherwise great food scene is the lack of a credible Mexican option. We’re not asking for anything special, just a place that serves simple, tasty tacos or burritos. But when the craving for Mexican gets strong, we don’t despair; we just head down to the waterside neighborhood of Karaköy, home to Beşaltı Kirvem Tantuni, a hole-in-the-wall (literally) spot whose food and atmosphere remind us of the tiny taquerías in Mexico and the United States that we miss so much.

Istanbul

Istanbul's Top 5 Beaneries

Until we visited some of Istanbul’s shrines to the baked bean, we generally regarded the dish as something eaten out of a can beside railroad tracks. But Turkey takes this humble food, known as kuru fasulye, seriously; that means chefs in tall toques carefully ladling out golden beans in a rich red gravy onto monogrammed flatware, served by waiters wearing bowties and vests. Even in the least formal of Istanbul’s beaneries, the guy manning the pot has the air of a high priest who knows that his incantations alone conjure something unusually delicious out of a simple dry white legume. This is no hobo fare.

Istanbul

Ask CB: Flyby Dining in Istanbul?

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ll have an eight-hour layover in Istanbul and was wondering if you have any suggestions for places to go for a good Turkish breakfast and lunch. I love to eat at small, local places serving authentic food. I would prefer restaurants in the Yeşilköy area, as I have to be back at Atatürk Airport to board an international flight (which I cannot afford to miss!).

Istanbul

Best Bites of 2012: Istanbul

After four years of publishing weekly dispatches from Istanbul’s culinary backstreets (on IstanbulEats.com and now on this site as well), we are still regularly surprised by new discoveries, impressed by the staying power of old standards and shocked by how quickly so much can change. For better or for worse, it is that dynamism that Istanbulites line up for, and the city never seems to run short on it. Heading into 2013, we are licking our chops in anticipation of the expected and the unexpected, which are always sure to be delicious, or at least interesting. Here are our Best Bites of 2012.

Istanbul

Lades: Old Faithful

If Lades, which means “wishbone” in Turkish, provided an actual wishbone alongside the usual post-meal wet wipe and toothpick, we’d close our eyes and make a wish that we could eat their tandır, or oven-roasted baby lamb, seven days a week. These large knots of tender, fragrant meat lined with a soft cushion of fat are the sort of high-calorie lunch that we might save for a special occasion, but Lades regulars take for granted.

Istanbul

İnci Pastanesi: Remember the Cream Puff

We would have liked to like the profiterol at İnci Pastanesi, and to believe their claim that the profiterole was invented on the premises in the 1940s. But in fact, we’ve always appreciated İnci for non-culinary reasons. Until last week, this old-school Beyoğlu pastry shop had been spooning out cream puffs covered in chocolate goop for almost 70 years with respect for tradition and a refreshing contempt for the latest trends in interior design. Our eyes had grown used to resting on its charmingly worn façade as we walked down İstiklal Caddesi. For better or worse, İnci was an institution.

Istanbul

Albay Dürüm: Kebab Konfessional

It is hard to identify exactly when the forgotten neck of Istanbul between Etiler and Arnavutköy became prime real estate. Not so long ago, overgrown green space alongside the road was interrupted by the occasional car wash and low-slung shanty; it was not so much a place as a road to other places. But now it seems this road is going places of its own. A private tennis club with a swimming pool shares a parking lot with Backyard, a café and restaurant with a big grassy yard filled with lounging parents and children wallowing in that rare Istanbul commodity: grass.

Istanbul

Asmalı Cavit: Special Orders Don’t Upset Them

We can’t prove it, but we suspect a network of tunnels lies underground in Beyoğlu that connects most of the meyhanes of Asmalımescit and Nevizade Sokak to the same mediocre kitchen, resulting in unexceptional mezes at scores of venues in this dining district. Following a number of tips, our search for a standout meyhane led us to the unassuming Asmalı Cavit on Asmalımescit Caddesi, where we’ve consistently had outstanding food. This traditional meyhane bucks the trend toward mediocrity with subtle but significant tweaks that, for us, make the meal.

Istanbul

Gram: Chef’s Creations, Hold the Ego

Certain global phenomena, like sushi, the mojito and the sitcom Golden Girls, might have arrived a bit late in Turkey, but as the world scrambles to go local, eat seasonally and connect with traditional culinary roots, Turkey is way ahead of the pack. Gram, chef Didem Şenol’s carefully curated locavore deli in Şişhane, feels perfectly in step with the stripped- down style that chefs from New York to New Zealand are favoring today.

Istanbul

Hamsi: Six Favorite Spots to Eat the Little Fish

The arrival of fall in Istanbul usually means one thing for us: hamsi season is about to begin. Hamsi, of course, are the minuscule fish (Black Sea anchovies) that Istanbulites are mad about, and the coming of fall and the cooling of the waters of the Black Sea mark the beginning of the best time of the year to eat the little suckers. In honor of hamsi season, we offer a list of six of our favorite places to try these tiny fish.

Istanbul

NATO Lokantası: The Lunchtime Alliance

Turkish politics make for a great lunch counter conversation. These days, one of the hot topics is a perceived axis shift, as if Ankara, feeling burned by the West, has turned the gaze of the Republic eastward, as easily as a dönerci reverses the rotation of his spit. But down in Karaköy at NATO Lokantası, an esnaf lokantası named in honor of Turkey’s entry into the Western Bloc some six decades ago, the tenor of the debate is still decidedly Cold War-era.

Istanbul

Sakarya Tatlıcısı: Just Dessert

The arrival of fall always finds us heading instinctively, like salmon swimming towards their ancestral headwaters, to the Balık Pazarı, Beyoğlu’s historic fish market. Autumn is quince season in Turkey and that means the appearance – for a limited time only – of one of our favorite desserts, ayva tatlısı (literally meaning “quince dessert,” although “quince in syrup” might be more accurate). Nestled in the fish market is Sakarya Tatlıcısı, a pastry and sweets shop with old-world charm that is one of our top stops for this dessert. The apple-like quince is one of those complicated, mysterious fruits that take on a new life when cooked. Raw, quinces are often astringent and inedible.

Istanbul

Klemuri: Black Sea Lazmatazz

Like Clark Kent hiding his Superman tights beneath a brown suit and glasses, Klemuri maintains the appearance of a predictable Beyoğlu café – wooden tables, shelves loaded with knickknacks, Buena Vista Social Club on the stereo, spinach crepes and a crispy chicken salad on the menu. But down in the kitchen, out of public view, Klemuri’s alter ego – a spry Laz cook – is waiting to save you from another boring “café” lunch.

Istanbul

In Istanbul, Staying One Meal Ahead of the Wrecking Ball

There’s nothing like a debate about “urban renewal” – often touted by municipal governments as a way to repurpose run-down urban areas for gentrification – to work up a good appetite. In a city like Istanbul, a teeming metropolis of 15 million people working to build a modern life among ancient ruins, these discussions seem to occur on every corn

Istanbul

İsmet Baba: Great Fish for Goodfellas

Diners in Istanbul are spoiled with options for fresh seafood. But most venues are mere caricatures of places like İsmet Baba, where traditions have been kept sacred for more than 50 years. While many other such restaurants are kitschy, İsmet is gritty and authentic. Located in Kuzguncuk, a charming neighborhood on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, it may not be the best restaurant in the city, but it’s got something most of the others have lost: old-school Istanbul charm and character.

Istanbul

Şimşek Pide Salonu: It’s Better with Butter

Turkey’s take on the pizza comes in two distinct varieties. There’s the Arabesque lahmacun, a round, ultra thin-crusted snack topped with a shmear of finely ground meat and seasoning. Then there’s pide, a more substantial canoe-shaped creation that’s a specialty of Turkey’s Black Sea region.

Istanbul

Köfteci Arnavut: On the Good Ship Meatball Shop

Perhaps it’s the proximity of the waters of the Golden Horn or the weathered wood interior, but we get a distinctly maritime feeling at Köfteci Arnavut, a tiny köfte joint in the historic Balat neighborhood. The members of the İştay family, who opened the place in 1947, seem to think the same thing, running the place with ship-shape efficiency.

Istanbul

Türkistan Restaurant: Lagmania with the Uighurs of Zeytinburnu

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. “Do you hear that?” asked Sean Roberts, an expert on Uighur culture and politics and our dining companion for the day. “They’re making the lagman.”

Istanbul

Kebapçı İskender: Delicious, By Law

A visit to Bursa İskender Kebabı® feels as if you’ve stepped right into the war room of the İskenderoğlu family’s never-ending quest to establish ownership over the İskender kebab, a plate of döner laying on a bed of cut flatbread doused with tomato sauce and butter and served with a scoop of cool yogurt on the side. The tables and walls of the restaurant are covered with literature about what the owners see as their family’s inheritance, but the rest of the world seems to consider public domain.

Istanbul

The Grand Bazaar Eats: Come for the Shopping, Stay for the Food

We like to think of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar – open since 1461 – as the world’s oldest shopping mall. If that’s the case, shouldn’t the Grand Bazaar be home to the world’s oldest food court? That may be taking the analogy too far, but for us, the Grand Bazaar can be as much a food destination as a shopping one. As we see it, one of the hidden pleasures of going to the bazaar (once you get past the overzealous shopkeepers hawking souvenirs) is exploring some of its quieter back alleys and interior courtyards for new dining possibilities, especially some of the smaller restaurants that cater not to tourists but rather to the locals who work in the sprawling marketplace. Here are some of our favorite places.

Istanbul

Fatih Karadeniz Pidecisi: Crunch Time

Inside Fatih Karadeniz Pidecisi, nothing could be heard over the crunch and crackle of fresh pide being torn open and chomped down on. Still, the man across the table from us spoke in a low, conspiratorial whisper: “There are some very well-known businessmen sitting at that table by the window. They all come here,” he said.

Istanbul

An App Now on Our Menu!

For almost a year we’ve been sorting through comments and suggestions from readers of IstanbulEats.com to help us develop the ultimate iPhone application for eating locally and authentically in Istanbul. We know Istanbul is a tough city to navigate, so our app’s mapping system will steer you to your destination lunch with GPS. With the “Nearby” feature, you’ll find the kebab, mantı or baklava nearest to you all over the city.

Istanbul

Café Niko: Goodbye, Lari

In a desk drawer at Istanbul Eats HQ is an envelope of leftovers from days when life was less sedentary: Tajik somoni, Kyrgyz som, Cypriot pounds, a wad of Macedonian denar and a small stack of Georgian lari. As with the last bite on the plate, it’s impossible to throw money away, no matter how unstable the currency. But the real value of having it on hand is that it makes a return visit seem likely, even pending. Our plans to return to Georgia were made, cancelled, rescheduled and cancelled again. It would seem our lari would never be much more than a filthy little memento, an IOU from the National Bank of Georgia for a khachapuri that would never be cashed in.

Istanbul

Hamov: Truth in Advertising

Around lunchtime, the phone at Hamov never stops ringing. The little pink delivery scooter and its tireless driver stay in perpetual motion in order to feed a neighborhood full of loyal customers good, home-style lunches where they seem to prefer it – in their homes. But Hamov is not just a delivery place; its small dining room fills up quickly, so we suggest arriving on the early side of the lunch rush to get the most out of Hamov.

Istanbul

Sultanahmet Dining Secrets: Where Locals Dare to Go

Call it the Sultanahmet Squeeze: How to stay close to the monuments of the Old City yet avoid eating in tourist traps? We get asked this question a lot. Since the Sultanahmet area is primarily a tourism zone, locals-only haunts are few and far between. At most restaurants, prices tend to be higher than usual, while quality and service are unreliable at best. That said, there are some fine places to eat in the area. We’ve compiled a short list of restaurants to help you avoid the traps.

Istanbul

Meşhur Unkapanı İMÇ Pilavcısı: The (Rice) Freaks Come Out at Night

Late one night, zipping down a busy Istanbul thoroughfare in a taxi on our way home from the airport, we passed an intriguing scene. Huddled around a brightly lit food cart was a large group of men stuffing their faces in a kind of zombie-like frenzy. It almost looked like a scene out of Night of the Living Dead. What were they eating?

Istanbul

Köfteci Hüseyin: The Cadillac of Meatballs

In New York, consider the pizza. You’ve got Famous Ray’s Pizza, Ray’s Original Pizza, World-Famous Original Ray’s Pizza, and so on. Ray and his imitators just wouldn’t bother if New Yorkers believed pizza was “just a slice.” It’s the same story in Istanbul with köfte, a dish that to non-locals may seem like nothing more than grilled meatballs, but which Turks take very seriously.

Istanbul

Ali Usta Kokoreç: Gut Master

Recently, while continuing our research into how kokoreç (grilled lamb intestines) became a fast-food staple in Istanbul, we were told by our favorite kelleci (vendor of cooked sheep’s head), Muammer usta, about one of the oldest kokoreç masters around. Ali usta’s shop is in Dolapdere, down the hill from the Tarlabaşı Sunday market and just past a large plane tree that is a neighborhood landmark, standing among tiny workshops, furniture depots and decrepit old residential buildings.

Istanbul

Beyoğlu Öğretmenevi: The Teacher’s Lounge

Like Atatürk statues and crescent-and-star flags etched into the sides of mountains, the öğretmenevi (“teacher’s house”) is an integral part of the Turkish landscape. Found in almost every city in Turkey, these government-run institutions serve as affordable guesthouses for educators on the road and – since anyone is welcome if space is available – for those traveling on a teacher’s budget.

Istanbul

Istanbul’s Top Street Foods, Part 1: Quick Hits

We’re especially fond of Istanbul’s vibrant – and sometimes plain wacky – street food scene. Here we present three of our favorite street foods and the best places in the city to get them.

Istanbul

Hacı Beşir Usta: The Raw and the Hooked

At Istanbul Eats HQ, the conversation comes up every once in a while about how çiğ köfte has emerged as a sort of fast-food franchising opportunity: young entrepreneurial types are opening up çiğ köfte joints in all sorts of neighborhoods in Istanbul these days. Which, we all agree, is pretty cool. Rather than opening up a KFC or an Orange Julius in the food court, the ambitious souls of Turkey more commonly open up a raw-meatball stand instead.

Istanbul

Fish in Istanbul: Natural Selection(s)

In the evolutionary process of the Istanbul fish restaurant, there was a moment in the late 1990s when the amphibious, shore-hugging boat restaurants crawled out of the Bosphorus and became land dwellers. Overnight, yellow Wellington boots became black loafers as seafaring grill men became restaurateurs and waiters.

Istanbul

Lades 2: A Beyoğlu Greasy Spoon

The no-frills Lades 2 presents diners with that age-old question: what to eat first, the chicken or the eggs? A Turkish version of the American-style greasy-spoon diner, this restaurant specializes in all things fowl, from chicken soup to a variety of egg dishes and even a dessert that – we kid you not – weds a thick, milky pudding with chicken. Even the name (“lades” means wishbone) follows the chicken theme.

Istanbul

Istanbul: State of the Stomach 2012

Beyond the kebab – and what you will find listed in most guidebooks for Istanbul – lies a wide range of unique Turkish regional cuisines and restaurants with hints of Balkan, Caucasian and Middle Eastern cooking. The city has been a crossroads of numerous civilizations for centuries and, more recently, a magnet for migrants from across Turkey, with every group that has either come through or stayed put adding their ingredients to Istanbul’s culinary stew. Thanks to this, one of the joys of visiting Istanbul is that, in terms of eating, it’s possible to visit every one of Turkey’s varied regions – and even a few neighboring countries – without ever leaving the city limits. With restaurants serving everything from the Middle Eastern-influenced kebabs of Southeast Turkey to the homey, rib-sticking soul food of the Black Sea area in the North, Istanbul has truly become the culinary Babel of the country.

Istanbul

Şahin Lokantası: Edible Complex

For Turks, mealtime is often a complicated emotional drama, one that revolves around a lifelong effort to return to the culinary womb – in other words, Mother’s kitchen. In Turkey, Mom’s cooking sets the standard by which all others are judged and, truth be told, some of the finest meals we’ve had here have been home-cooked ones.

Istanbul

Kandilli Suna’nın Yeri: Port of Call

Boat-spotting on the Bosphorus is a favorite pastime for those lucky enough to have windows with the right view. On any given weekend afternoon on the busy straits that divide this city, the ship and boat traffic unfolds like a caravan of the flags of the lesser-known countries of the world.