Gabriel Oktay Cili is a man of many talents. When we visited him on a winter day in January, he had a crowd of visitors packed into his tiny, tunnel-like shop on the main tourist drag in old Mardin, near the Syrian border with Turkey. Each had a cup of cardamom-laced Assyrian coffee or tea in hand and each was waiting for Gabriel to attend to them. For a half hour, he sold silver jewelry to one couple visiting the city and pierced the lip of a woman who worked in a restaurant down the street. He fixed the gold necklace of another with an ancient blowtorch and fitted a young man for a custom silver bracelet.

Settling into our first cross-country journey in Turkey many years ago, we were pleasantly surprised by the comforts of Turkish bus travel. The young garson wore a proper uniform and dribbled cologne onto our hands every hour or so. Tea was served regularly, accompanied by one of our early Turkish culinary discoveries, Eti brand pop kek – those unctuous and delicious cakes frosted or stuffed with everything from raisins to chocolate – the Anatolian Twinkie. Call us heathens, but we love them. We’ve tried many traditional Turkish cakes, but none we encountered measured up to the beloved pop kek. That is, until one recent visit to Fatih Sarmacısı, an Ottoman-era shop making our new favorite cake, sarma (the word means “wrapped” or “rolled up” in Turkish).

In the former Soviet Central Asian republics, the boilerplate restaurant menu consists of plov, lagman, shashlik and samsa. Tired-looking Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Tajik establishments all serve up the same limp noodles and oily rice with a shrug – it’s their job. In the markets of Samarkand, Osh and Almaty, we found some exciting exceptions to this rule but, generally, restaurants in the region tend to successfully obscure the fact that Central Asian food, when cooked with passion, can be a riot of the senses. In Central Asia, according to regional specialist Sean Roberts, culinary traditions have customarily been preserved by a master/apprentice system that mainly existed outside restaurants. Monumental occasions like weddings and funerals in Uzbekistan often involve several hundred guests eating multiple meals. For this, an usta is called in from his day job, like Clark Kent from the newsroom.

When a tiny three-table restaurant has but a single item on its nonexistent menu that it has served for nearly three quarters of a century, one steps in the door with high expectations and an enthusiastic appetite. These will be met and exceeded at Tarihi Odabaşı, a hole-in-the-wall in the heart of old Istanbul that has been making çiğ börek – a buoyant, lightly-fried pastry stuffed with ground beef that is a staple of Crimean Tatar cuisine – since 1950. The restaurant gets its name from the nearby Has Odabaşı Behruz Ağa Mosque, built in the 16th century by doyen Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan. It is located in the Çapa/Şehrimini neighborhood, which is inside the old city walls of Istanbul.

From syrup-drenched baklava to creamy milk puddings, Turkey has no shortage of sweet treats. But perhaps none have intrigued foreign visitors to Turkey as much as Turkish delight. Lokum is famous in the English-speaking world as the enchanted confection that entices Edmund to join the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but in reality, the sticky sweet has been enchanting audiences since it was first developed in the early 1800s. Dubbed “Turkish delight” by English traders, lokum inspired a wave of imitators across Europe. “Lokum predates gummy sweets – gummy sweets were made trying to replicate Turkish delight. They didn’t know the secret ingredient, which is to manage the pH level,” says Selim Cenkel, founder and usta at Marsel Delights.

For this week’s CB Book Club installment, we caught up with Andrea Lemieux, author of The Essential Guide to Turkish Wine: An exploration of one of the oldest and most unexpected wine countries (Canoe Tree Press, 2021). In this exhaustive nearly 300-page guide, Lemieux, a WSET Level 2-certified wine expert and blogger behind The Quirky Cork, traces the history of Turkey’s wine tradition, and offers insight on grapes, wineries and where to enjoy Turkish wine in Istanbul. For those planning a trip, the book is as practical as it is informative, with maps, addresses and contacts for wineries and venues throughout the country.

Roaming the streets of Istanbul at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday can be a surreal experience. The sun is shining, the seagulls are bellowing as they dip and dive – but the normally bustling streets are quiet. A few shops might be lifting their shutters, and cafés in younger neighborhoods may only just be putting on their first pot. Always a bit of a morning snoozer even on other days of the week, Istanbul is a lazy Sunday city like no other. At Lider Pide, however, Çetin and Cemil Zor are already slinging out fresh Trabzon-style pides to eager breakfast goers who’ve made the trek out to the Ümraniye district on Istanbul’s Asian side.

It has been a bitter pill to swallow, but we've long accepted the fact that we'll likely never find proper Mexican food in Istanbul. What is available registers as sub-par Tex-Mex at best: hard-shell tacos, salsa that packs no punch, weak margaritas and the inevitable cactus/sombrero-dominated décor found in underwhelming Mexican-themed restaurants worldwide. A lack of understanding of the cuisine is as equally to blame as the scarcity of key Mexican staples in Turkey: corn tortillas, cotija cheese, good avocados, black beans and fresh cilantro, to name a few. Some of these ingredients can be found at specialty supermarkets or neighborhood organic bazaars if one is up for a tedious scavenger hunt, others are just unavailable full stop.

Hidden between two well-trodden avenues – the busy Halaskargazi and the glitz and glam of Vali Konağı – Kuyumcu İrfan Sokak is a back street in the high-end neighborhood of Nişantaşı. Here, cozy little lokantalar (Turkish diners), tobacco shops and chic cafés dwell in the shadow of the ancient Greek and Armenian buildings that give this part of Nişantaşı an aura of timeless elegance. Adding to that atmosphere is the miniscule pizzeria Azzurro Neopolitano, which in the two years since it opened has managed to snag the attention of pizza aficionados – and Italians – all over Istanbul. A quiet man, co-owner Ünal Yıldız comes out of the kitchen, his hands still dusted with flour.

When walking around the Akatlar neighborhood, it’s easy to forget that we’re just a stone’s throw from the glassy skyscrapers that tower over Istanbul’s financial district, Levent. The quiet residential area features a curious number of stand-alone villas. Even the apartment blocks seem to have fewer floors and more space in between buildings. The familiar sounds of gridlocked traffic are conspicuously absent. Like in many Istanbul neighborhoods, the ground floors of most apartment buildings are below street level. Walking along Haydar Aliyev Caddesi, it’s easy to walk right past Santé Wine & More. This would be a shame, since that would mean missing out on a carefully curated selection of Turkish artisan wines.

Ask anyone from the Eastern Turkish city of Bitlis where büryan kebabı comes from, and they’ll proudly tell you that the slow-cooked meat dish hails from none other than their hometown, near Lake Van. Pose the same question to folks from Siirt, just 100 km south, and they’ll insist anyone making it from a city other than theirs is doing it all wrong. Büryan kebabı refers to lamb (or mutton) slow cooked in an underground tandır oven until pull-apart tender. The meat, crackling with skin and fat, is sliced or cut into chunks and served atop fluffy, warm bread. The fat from the meat soaks into the bread below, making it glisten.

Despite the bitter January cold, surging cases of Omicron and roaring inflation, Istanbul seemed its usual vibrant self on a recent Friday night: Our first choice restaurant was fully booked, even in its expanded space, and the new neighborhood ocakbaşı where we ended up bustled pleasantly, with every seat taken at the large counter encircling the grill. But appearances can be deceiving. “Meyhanes are still full, but people are eating less, drinking less; they can’t afford to consume like they did before,” says chef Aliye Gündüzalp, one of the owners of Müşterek meyhane in Beyoğlu.

“I don't want to die, because I just can't get enough of Istanbul,” proclaims Mari Esgici, chef and owner of Marinee Kaburga, a small, cozy restaurant specializing in kaburga (beef ribs) and brisket that is a delightful addition to the Kurtuluş neighborhood's culinary patchwork. Hailing from an Armenian family with roots in the southeastern city of Diyarbakır, Mari came to Istanbul in 1980 as a child and has seen a great deal of the City. In the process, she has become a vital part of its culinary scene, in no small part due to her larger-than-life personality. It would be an understatement to say that Mari is a character, her intense vibes radiate from the kitchen and you know exactly where you stand with the chef.

This was a topsy turvy year for Istanbul's restaurant scene, as the first six months of 2021 were marked by a series of pandemic restrictions and lockdowns that made for slow business, while a grand reopening of sorts on July 1 resulted in thousands of people flocking back to their favorite restaurants and bars, some of which had been fully closed since March 2020. During the second half of the year, a pulsating energy hummed throughout the city, establishments were packed to the gills, and it became impossible to catch a taxi home on a Saturday night. Istanbulites seemed to be going out and enjoying themselves as much as possible in the event that they might not be allowed to the next week. For our Best Bites of 2021, we each chose an Istanbul classic, a modern favorite, and an exciting new addition to the city’s culinary scene, all of which have rolled with the pandemic punches.

It's nearing the end of 2021 and Turkey is bracing stormy weather. The economy is struggling, the Turkish lira has lost a quarter of its value this year, rental prices are soaring nationwide and purchasing power has been compromised. On top of it all, already sky-high taxes on alcohol were hiked again earlier this month, making it increasingly more difficult for people to drown their problems in a drink or four. The country's liquor sector has been hampered by a full-blown advertising ban since 2013 that even prevents companies from opening an Instagram account. All things considered, one might think it a bad time to produce what is essentially Turkey's first boutique rakı.