Culinary Backstreets lunch hunting tip #1: Wander into one of Istanbul’s numerous districts of small commerce and find yourself on a small street with a shoe cobbler, a knife sharpener and hardware shops.

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.

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.

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.

Last week we had our last meal at the iconic Beşiktaş kaymak shop Pando. The framed news clippings were all boxed up; the marble-topped tables that lined the blue and white walls of the tiny place were in the storage space of a friend somewhere in the neighborhood. All that was left was a space heater, soon to be taken away. Even still, Pando and his family were gathered there together, presumably with nowhere else to be. We sat out front at the last remaining table with Pando and his wife, Yuanna. Pando shuffled across the street through a swarm of people waiting in line outside of Karadeniz Pide ve Döner. He nodded to Asim Usta, who sent over a döner sandwich and a cup of ayran. Takeout, Pando’s last offering.