Monday

Gilan Cafe: Sweet Home Iran

(Editor’s Note: This guest post is by Jeffrey Gibbs, an American writer and teacher living in Kadikoy whose personal blog can be found here.)

I stumbled home from a day of managing wild middle schoolers and started to open the fridge for a medicating Efes Dark only to find a magnet near the handle that read, “Gilan Cafe, Iranian Cuisine. Kadıköy.”

I did a double take. Yes, yes, it said Iranian. Iranian! How long have I searched for a decent Iranian restaurant in Istanbul? The address was just up the road and so my fiance and I hit the sidewalk and after about five measly minutes, found the unpreposssessing little cafe tucked among the apartment buildings of the Acibadem neighborhood.

The cafe had an outdoor patio with heaters and a cozy room inside simply decorated with red table clothes and pictures of Persopolis. Among Darius’s ruins, a new display of framed newspaper clippings sang the praises of the little restaurant. In the background, Iranian music by the famous Persian musician, Hayde, played from a laptop manned by our waiter.

We were soon met by Fetihan, a sharp, down-to-earth woman who had lived for thirty years with her Iranian husband in the Gilan province of Iran (thus the restaurant’s name). “It was like the Iranian Black Sea,” she told us. “With the blue water of the Caspian Sea in front of you and the mountains at your back. Ahhh, a gorgeous place.” Continue…