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.

Zeynep Arca Şallıel had a successful career in advertising in Istanbul, but in 1995 she decided to take on a daunting new challenge: taking part in the revival of small-scale viniculture in the ancient winemaking region of Thrace. “I wanted to do something with soil, something that mattered a little bit more,” she says. Her father had always dreamed of making wine, so together, they started Arcadia Vineyards. Their vineyards are planted on the 65 million-year-old eroded rock of Istranca Mountain, which creates a border between Turkey and Bulgaria. We drove two hours west from Istanbul through rolling hills of drying sunflower fields to learn how this pioneering winemaker is making great wines under difficult circumstances.

Just up the Golden Horn from the Egyptian Spice Bazaar is Küçük Pazarı, a rarely explored warren of market streets and Ottoman-era caravanserais that are home to scissors sharpeners, saddle shops, vendors selling axle grease (by the vat) and purveyors of axes. From this potpourri of run-down yet extremely photogenic shops, one storefront, decorated with candy canes and Turkish delight, beckons from a distance like a foodie mirage. Welcome to Altan Şekerleme – or, better yet, Candyland.

Editor's note: In the latest installment of our recurring feature, First Stop, we asked chef and artist Dilara Erbay where she stops first for food when she heads to Istanbul. Erbay interprets traditional Turkish flavors from a global perspective through her company, Abracadabra. Her children's cookbook, published in Turkey, explores alternative, healthy ways for children to eat.

Even we sometimes find that our palates have grown weary of rakı and eggplant salad. Lately, when that happens, we’ve been heading over to the Asian side of Istanbul for unique Iranian-Turkish mezes and hearty carafes of Aegean red wine at Şiraz, a tiny meyhane in the Moda neighborhood of Kadıköy.

The first time we approached the stand of the legendary fish sandwich man, we were pleasantly surprised by what we saw: a dark, portly man with a glorious mustache (hence Mario, our nickname for him) turning fish on a portable grill cart next to the Karaköy waterfront. He had a long line of people patiently waiting for an hour to get their order in. He is surrounded by other balık ekmekçi trying desperately to ride the wave of his success, but they struggle to survive.

Farooj al Zaeem is, pretty much, the best kind of restaurant made to resemble the worst kind of restaurant. If the neighborhood – one of Beyoğlu’s most unkempt snatches – doesn’t send you running, then the look of this place, like a knockoff polo shirt with misspellings, will signal that something here is not right.

The brothers Altu and Erol Aslan, who operate the Yeni Melek corner store on Ayhan Işık Sokak in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu neighborhood, have a legitimate complaint against their next-door neighbor, Tarihi Kalkanoğlu Pilavcısı. The shop – morning, noon and night – really does reek of butter. For those unfamiliar with the preferred cooking agent of the eastern Black Sea, where the neighbor in question hails from, this isn’t the sort of bland whitish grease that comes from the Land o’ Lakes; it's a funky yellow mass that is bused in from the villages around Trabzon in unmarked buckets like contraband.

Istanbul has plenty of kebab joints, but places serving cağ are sadly hard to find. Originating in the eastern Anatolian province of Erzurum, the kebab looks like a horizontal döner, but tastes otherworldly. If South American cowboys somehow found themselves in Erzurum’s grassy Turkish steppe, they would surely be struck down with déjà vu at the sight of this carnivores’ fantasy, turning slowly over a hardwood fire. The way we see it, cağ is the Turkish equivalent of Argentina’s asado or the Brazilian churrasco, a kebab for serious meat lovers.

“We grow everything here – kale, dill, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, arugula, eggplant, lettuce, cauliflower… everything,” the elderly woman says proudly, waving her hand in the direction of her small field as she digs her worn plastic sandals into the dirt. While she grows the vegetables and herbs, her 80-year-old husband tends his pomegranate trees and takes their products from this patch of farmland at the far northern end of Istanbul’s Sarıyer district to sell at local markets around the city.

When we pick up a hefty, shiny copper pan in his workshop, Emir Ali Enç unhesitatingly claims, “You are now holding the best saucepan in the world.”

My grandfather passed away before I was born, and although we never met, he has always been a fascinating figure for me. He was from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, but after losing his entire family during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, he immigrated to Turkey, bringing his shamanic beliefs and cuisine along with him.

Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch? In fact, over at Gastronomika, a new Istanbul culinary project, the food is served not only free of charge but also with an intriguing – and ambitious – backstory

Misty, lush Fırtına Valley is worlds away from Istanbul’s concrete urban hustle. It’s a land of cascading waterfalls, rushing rivers, wild edibles and precipitous hillsides covered with glossy tea bushes. We came to escape Istanbul’s infamous August heat and learn about the region’s special foods. After a week, we had stomped our way through bagpipe-fueled celebratory circle dances and eaten our weight in fried trout and cornbread.

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.