There was a time in Istanbul when we had to go to a small international bus station in the Aksaray neighborhood to find Georgian food. There were a few different eateries in the area, but usually what brought us there was a shabby hole-in-the-wall up a flight of rickety stairs in a corner of the station, which generally catered to Georgians about to embark on a two-day bus trip back to their country. The food was decent, the service was surly at best, the atmosphere was shady (we and others had our phones stolen by other customers in the middle of dinner) but above all, they sold chacha,the flagship Georgian spirit distilled from the remnants of grapes used for wine.

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.

If Istanbul's old city represents its ancient and imperial history, the center of the city's Beyoğlu district is the heart of its modern past, present and future. As tumultuous as the first century of the Turkish Republic, Beyoğlu is in a constant state of flux. It is the heart of culture and entertainment in Istanbul, and still carries the air of the cosmopolitan area it once was. Its impressive array of gorgeous turn-of-the-century European-style buildings is matched by no other area of the city. While a recent process of crass commercialization has turned many people away from Beyoğlu, it is making a resurgence, evident by thriving meyhanes and watering holes such as Marlen and the recently-opened Sendika, a sleek, enthralling space with a bar/restaurant below and dance floor above where DJs spin five nights a week. For us, Beyoğlu is always the place to be, positive or negative changes notwithstanding.

Back in the day, according to legend, a man named Köpoğlu spent all his money on rakı, the Turkish spirit made from grapes and anise, and was left with no money to buy food. Hungry, pockets empty, he went home and grabbed a couple of eggplants, some tomatoes and garlic from his garden and threw them onto the coal fire of his grill. He then mixed together garlic and yogurt as a sauce and combined it with the grilled vegetables to eat alongside his rakı, inventing one of the most famous meze dishes in Turkey and Mediterranean. Today in Turkey, we can be sure that summer is here when eggplants and tomatoes appear together in abundance on market shelves. Especially when topped with garlic yogurt, these two vegetables make an exceptionally fresh and tasty combination.

The main street that flanks the Gayrettepe metro station in central Istanbul is lined with a number of imposing skyscrapers that increase in frequency as the avenue progresses towards the frenetic Mecidiyeköy district, a stretch of urban chaos that has a Gotham City vibe, particularly when it’s rainy, cold and dark outside. But heading into the backstreets of Gayrettepe reveals a calm, classic Istanbul neighborhood with a number of hidden gems. Among these is Oklava, a four-table pasta restaurant located inside an aging building complex. The menu changes daily and there are about half a dozen items on it, featuring fresh, handmade pasta prepared with high-quality hand-picked ingredients. Before discovering the restaurant, Gayrettepe was synonymous with the Department of Immigration and the local tax office where we paid our residence permit fees, but now we have a less stressful reason to visit the area.

Behind Istanbul's hulking Çağlayan courthouse in the center of town near the main highway, there is a series of mixed industrial-residential neighborhoods with a handful of restaurants, none of which are particularly noteworthy. That was until Kaburgacı Koray recently opened up shop on the corner of a backstreet in the area, quickly winning over not just the lawyers and other courthouse employees who now have a lunch spot to die for, but also people from all over town, who, like us, quickly realized that Kaburgacı Koray is perhaps the best kebapçı in Istanbul.

When the neighborhood institution Öz Konak Lokantası closed back in December 2022, it left a hole in the bustling, bohemian-turned-touristy Cihangir neighborhood for reliable, homestyle lunch and dinner food. And not just food, but a feeling of community and home that the restaurant had offered its former customers. Dilara Eren, a chef and recipe developer, was, at that moment, finishing up a job as the Turkey community manager for a food recipe app and figuring out what was next in her career. She’d managed a big restaurant in the past and had been catering on the side, building a local following for her creative, delicious dishes. Neighborhood friends kept saying, “We need a new lunch place to replace Oz.” With that in mind she opened Zerze, an inviting, new-generation lokanta on the busy main street that runs through the neighborhood.

On a weeknight near the tail end of March, Istanbul found some clear skies after an annoyingly wet winter. The sky was navy blue, verging on purple, and it was jean-jacket weather, the best kind. Just shy of 10 p.m., we ambled through our most-frequented corner of the Beyoğlu district, the area where Mis, Kurabiye and Süslü Saksı Streets converge. This triangle is home to some of our favorites: Köfteci Hüseyin fires up some of the tastiest grilled meatballs in Istanbul, Zübeyir Ocakbaşı grills skewers of the best lamb money can buy, Müşterek and Meclis offer excellent meze in a warm setting, while Marlen is our favorite place to drown in pints of Tuborg beer or sip reasonably-priced cocktails. That early-spring night, the outdoor tables were mostly full, and would have been jam-packed had it been a weekend.

In the steep hillside Kulaksız section of the Beyoğlu neighborhood, Şakir Sefer nimbly weaves dough stuffed with small piles of kıyma (ground beef) or strips of pastırma (cured, spiced beef) into the shape of a canoe before sending it into the flame-licked depths of a massive stone oven. It's after lunch rush but things are still busy at Görele Pidecisi, a classic shop that specializes in Black Sea-style pide, different configurations of baked decadence in which meat and cheese mingle as the dough cooks, only to be enriched with a dollop of yellow butter that melts quickly and a whole egg that reaches over-easy on its own in the heat of the toppings.

The fourth time was the charm when we finally were able to take a seat at Salepepe, a five-stool pizza bar in the exceedingly hip neighborhood of Yeldeğirmeni, located in Istanbul's Kadıköy district on the Anatolian side of the city. When we first went, the restaurant was closed due to selling out early, while the next attempts involved lines out the door, and those in line had dibs on the last pies of the day. But we weren't about to give up after hearing lots of hype about the first and only Tokyo-style Neapolitan pizza joint in Istanbul, which was opened at the beginning of 2023 by 34-year-old Altuğ Şencan, a photographer by trade who long wanted to open his own restaurant.

It's a busy fall weekday in Istanbul, the weather is perfect and the streets around Istanbul University, the Beyazit Mosque and the iconic Grand Bazaar are buzzing. In the late afternoon, shopkeepers are scrambling to make their last sales while the best restaurants in the area are getting ready to close. Mediocre establishments are open later into the night, with employees brandishing large menus and coaxing tourists through their doors. Avoiding the crowd around one of the bazaar's main entrances, we saunter down a side street where things instantly feel more local. We've come to the specific address of a kebab restaurant recommended by friend and intrepid Istanbul walk leader Benoit Hanquet, but there is no such eatery in sight.

Some recipes are so deeply connected with the region from which they originate that they are simply named after that place. Circassian chicken, an appetizer beloved in Turkey and throughout the Caucasus, is such a dish. The recipe itself takes on many different variations across different geographical locations, much like the mosaic of people and cultures that can be found within the large area in which Circassian chicken is enjoyed. There is record of the recipe for Circassian chicken entering Ottoman cuisine as early as the year 1859, by way of immigrants and exiles who came from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire.

Situated on a pleasant corner in the heart of Kurtuluş is an unlikely yet warmly welcomed addition to this beloved neighborhood's excellent food scene: Horo Burger, which only features Sloppy Joes on its menu. While the name of this American classic conjures pleasant memories of family dinner for some and horrifying flashbacks from the school cafeteria for others, Horo's take on the Sloppy Joe is faithful yet elevated, just as put-together as it is messy.

On a side street just behind the lower edge of the Grand Bazaar lies a small, unsuspecting sign directing one up a flight of stairs to Kardeşler Köftecisi, a no-frills, hole-in-the-wall shop that has been serving grilled meatballs (köfte) for more than half a century. Unlike many nearby restaurants on the touristy strip, no one is trying to pressure you to go inside and there is no English menu, or any menu at all, for that matter. Kardeşler Köftecisi is truly an esnaf (small tradesmen’s) restaurant, as most of their customers work in the massive covered market and in other shops in the vicinity.

This year was one of tragedy and tumult for Turkey, as the devastating earthquakes of February 6 ripped through the southeast of the country, leaving more than 50,000 dead and displacing millions. If that weren't enough, the focus then shifted to highly-polarizing general and presidential elections held at the end of spring, with the economy spiraling ever downward and unofficial inflation rates soaring past three digits. The Turkish lira continued losing value and the prices of so many consumer goods increased every couple of days. The word “expensive” lost all meaning. Having established that gloomy context, the Istanbul food world nevertheless remained resilient. There’s still excitement to be found in the form of excellent spots that further confirm our belief that we could never run out of intriguing places in this sprawling city.