Monday

Kaburga Sofrası: The Rib Shack

In eastern Turkey, a lamb is consumed literally from head to tail, with hardly any part of the animal going uncooked. One of the specialties from the region, particularly in the area around the picturesque city of Mardin, is kaburga – breast of lamb – a cut akin to short ribs that often ends up in the scrap heap in other parts of the world. Over at Kaburga Sofrası in Aksaray (the restaurant also has two other locations: one in the Şişli area and another in Laleli, a district near the Grand Bazaar), an Istanbul neighborhood filled with cheap hotels, seedy internet cafés and a surprising amount of good restaurants, kaburga is given the royal treatment, stuffed with peppery rice and slow cooked for some eight hours, until the meat turns meltingly tender.

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