Monday

Ali Usta’s Sahlep: Pure and Uncut

3 Comments October 25, 2010 – 11:10 am | Permalink |  Print This Post |

Cemal bey sits behind a desk in a small, bare office on the second floor of a decrepit building in the city’s old quarter near the Egyptian Bazaar. Three large burlap sacks filled with what look like jumbo-sized yellow raisins are all that adorn the room. That and a fax machine. The window behind him frames one of Istanbul’s many transfixing cityscapes – the Golden Horn stretching out under the Galata bridge where it meets the Bosphorus and the Marmara Sea, departing ferries churning the water white – but Cemal keeps his eye on a fax that’s coming in. A wholesaler of sahlep (dried wild orchid root), which is pulverized into powder that’s mixed with heated milk and turned into a wintertime delicacy drink of the same name, Cemal counts among his clients some of the big shots in Istanbul’s ice-cream world (the powder is also used to thicken their product).  They fax in an order and he sends them kilo-sized plastic bags of pure white sahlep powder. He chafes at the mere mention of the roving sahlep vendors who work the streets of Istanbul.

“Just because a man sells sahlep doesn’t make him a real sahlepci,” he offers as a warning.

“Thieves! They’re putting pulverized pasta in there, bread, whatever. I heard they even grind up animal bones and call it Avrupa sahlep. Frauds! They sell it for 7 TL per kilo. Think about that. A kilo of real sahlep, the pure stuff,” he looks over to the sacks, “costs 180 per kilo.”

“So I don’t drink sahlep just anywhere.”

He did, however, recommendation a few addresses from his client list where we could drink the real thing. We followed one of these tips over to the Asian side to compare the real thing with the street sahlep we’ve been hooked on for years.

Ali Usta
Most people harp about the ice-cream over at Moda’s Ali Usta, which is indeed worthy of a full review, but we came for Ali’s real deal, uncut sahlep.

Our taste for sahlep was acquired on the street, which is something like growing fond of Mexican food in Dushanbe, so our sahlep palette was way out of whack when we arrived at Ali Usta. We were expecting that egg noggy, extra sweet starchy liquid jolt with a cinnamon topping.  Actually we were expecting all of those flavors to be ramped up, somehow more “sahlep-y” on account of the purity levels promised to us by Cemal.

As it turns out, real sahlep is not such an exotic drink at all. There is a mild herbal hint carried by fresh milk and just a touch of cinnamon, but it bears little resemblance to the carnival of flavors we know and love from the pushcart. Ali Usta’s sahlep makes itself known in the consistency. Whereas street sahlep is a bit gluey, Ali usta’s is pure silk. Exotic as the flower from which it is extracted, sahlep is just a starch in the end and one that benefits from lots of sugary, flavorful additives.

As fine as Ali usta’s sahlep was, next time we head out to Moda we’ll have a double scoop of his pistachio ice-cream. We will save our sahlep drinking for those spontaneous moments when we see the brass sahlep samovar mounted to a rickety pushcart round the corner on a rainy day.

“Sahhhhlepppp!” the man will shout and we won’t correct him or inquire about purity levels or even wonder about the presence animal bones. For better or for worse, this is the sahlep we know and love.

Ali Usta
Address: Moda Caddesi No.264/A, Moda
Telephone: 216-414-1880

Kadem Sahlepcilik (Cemal bey, Sahlep Wholesaler)
Address: Asmaalti Cad. Kalcin Sok. Cavusbasi Han No:23 k:1 D:12, Eminonu
Tel/Fax: 212-519-0497

(photo by Yigal Schleifer)