Monday
Inciralti: Meyhane Time Machine

We like to think of Inciralti, a laid back meyhane in the sleepy Bosphorus-side Beylerbeyi neighborhood, as a destination restaurant – not so much because of the food, but because of the destination itself.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the food here, which is reliably well made. The meze tray at Inciralti (which means “under the fig tree” in Turkish) is brought to your table carrying all the classics, plus a few welcome and tasty surprises, such as the zingy brined twigs of the caper plant and a sea bass filet that had been cured in a piquant sauce redolent of curry. Among the excellent mains we had sea bass again, this time grilled wrapped inside grape vine leaves, and meltingly soft uykuluk (sweetbreads), that were also grilled and dusted with oregano and red pepper. Both were winners.
But it’s Inciralti’s location that will have us coming back, especially if we’re looking for an opportunity to take an excursion without leaving Istanbul. Continue…
All entries filed under Reviews (Eats)
no responses - Posted 08.27.10
In the rapidly developing Istanbul district of Beyoglu, a new concept restaurant is born everyday – Korean fried chicken, construct your own canapé, a restaurant claiming to serve the widest variety soups in the world, etc. If a place makes it past infancy, pirated versions of the original are sure ...continue
no responses - Posted 08.20.10
With all of the hype around Bursa’s claim to fame, the Iskender kebab, you’d think Bursans persisted on a diet of thinly sliced doner, pide, tomato sauce and frothy melted butter. But in between the spinning meat-sicles, the very icon of Turkish fast food, the markets of Bursa offer a ...continue
no responses - Posted 08.16.10
Think of Ramadan as a kind of month-long biathalon that consists of an all-day race to beat back the hunger and thirst of fasting, followed by an all-night marathon of eating and drinking in order to fortify the body for the next day’s fast. In recent years in Turkey, iftar, ...continue
no responses - Posted 08.09.10
Like Turkish foreign policy, we could easily be accused of “tilting east” these days. Just after making our way to Fatih’s Öz Kilis, we soon found ourselves trawling the streets of the nearby Aksaray neighborhood in search of food from another southeastern Turkish city near the Syrian border, in this ...continue
4 responses - Posted 08.06.10
In Istanbul, offal-eating traditions run deep. In the wee hours, the horde heads out for tripe and trotter soup. Some butcher shops, like exclusive boutiques, sell nothing but organs, hanging them proudly in the glass vitrine like so many Fendi handbags. We’ve written at length about finer points of kelle, ...continue
no responses - Posted 08.02.10
In Turkish popular lore, the denizens of Kilis, a town in southeastern Turkey right near the Syrian border, are known for two things: kebab making and smuggling. We haven’t been to Kilis, so we can’t vouch for the smuggling bit. But we did recently have lunch at Öz Kilis, a ...continue
7 responses - Posted 07.29.10
(Editor's Note: After previous installments of our "Read Between the Buns" series -- a look at Istanbul's burgeoning burger scene -- we received complaints that we failed to consider a spot called Egg & Burger. We recently had a chance to try things out there and now return with a ...continue
4 responses - Posted 07.23.10
The roaring twenties: flappers in the Pera Palas Hotel were dancing the can-can, Art Deco was all the rage, the Turkish Republic was born. Hope, progress and newness double stepped to the beat of Kemal Ataturk’s drum. This was the backdrop to which two Istanbul bakers, Filip and Yorgi, opened ...continue






