CB on the Road: Karadeniz Dreams

By Asher Kohn photos by Yigal Schleifer

Published on June 27, 2014

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

Ayaspaşa Russian Restaurant : Istanbul's Cosmopolitan Past in the Present

Boris Ivanovitch, a White Russian refugee who was among the more than 100,000 who fled the Bolshevik Revolution to Constantinople, and Judith Kreschanovsky, an immigrant from Hungary, set the trajectory of the menu when they first set a table at Ayaspaşa for the public. Such a restaurant only ever could have opened in the early years of Republican Istanbul, where people who might have never otherwise met anywhere else on earth crossed paths in “The City.” The menu was and is composed of recipes that Judith cooked herself, and features elements of Russian and Hungarian cuisine.