(Editor’s Note: This guest post was provided to us by Olga Tikhonova, who writes a wonderful blog about Istanbul food and life in Turkey. To her credit, Olga has managed to track down what had long been a holy grail for Istanbul chowhounds: a local restaurant serving authentic Georgian food.)

For a while I have been skeptical about ethnic food in Istanbul: local tastes usually turned any restaurant serving foreign cuisine into something that was only a slight modification of traditional Turkish food. Yet recently I discovered a Georgian eatery producing authentic flavors without worrying too much about local tastes.

Emniyet Garajı, the massive bus terminal in Aksaray, sees hundreds of people coming and going every day from Georgia. Around the bus terminal you will find the essential infrastructure in place: ticket offices of bus companies, currency exchange booths and a few eateries. Everyone speaks Georgian. “It’s like a little Georgia here,” tells me Maho, a Georgian friend of mine. Georgia is only 24 hours and $50 away, which sounds like a good deal to Maho’s countrymen, attracted to Turkey by the poor economic situation in their country. Many are happy to make the trip to Istanbul and take up a seasonal job here to support their families back home.

I met Maho through some local friends and before yet another visa run he invited us to a restaurant. Sitting down for a meal and a few drinks is a big deal in Georgia, with arrivals and departures of all sorts being mandatory occasions to do so. 

A five-minute walk away from the Emniyet Garaj we stumbled upon a spot graced with a sign that said “Cafe Euro.” While I considered heading onwards, Maho pulled me by the sleeve. “Here we are!” he said. We entered a place with a couple of simple tables and chairs occupied by a bunch of smoking men. Dyed-blond hostess Eka behind the counter cheek-kissed with Maho, indicating a certain familiarity between the two.

“My cousin used to worked here. Was good money, you know,” Maho explained. “Why did she leave?” I asked. “She was tired of drunken brawls and fights on weekends,” he replied. I thought of a dramatic difference between an ethnic eatery that interprets foreign flavors for the enjoyment of the local public and a place that serves the original thing to immigrants. Cafe Euro has clearly got enough publicity among Georgians in Istanbul not to worry about catering to locals.

Meanwhile, things started materialize on the table. First came the plates, knifes, forks, water glasses and tiny tea glasses with no tea. A small plastic bottle of a transparent liquid arrived. Maho opened it and poured some into the tea glasses. If you are familiar with the concept of homemade vodka you may be interested in trying chacha, proudly brewed in each self-respecting Georgian household. Otherwise you should stick to something commercially produced.

Such as tarkhun. Tarkhun is a carbonated drink deep green in color based on the extract of tarragon, a green plant with a slight hint of anise. Tarkhun is the invention of a Georgian pharmacist in late 19th century which got a new life as a mass-produced carbonated drink in the Soviet Union. The drink was our Sprite, just million times better, if you ask me.

Soon the food started arriving. There is no menu at Cafe Euro: just like any Georgian restaurant it features the same range of specialties and assumes you know what you want.
First arrived khachapuri, Georgian savory pies which immediately showcased both the simplicity of the flavors and the heights of the cook’s skills. Piping hot, they are sliced into segments revealing the generous quantity of cottage cheese stuffed inside. The leavened dough tastes just like the grandma would make – a little sour and nicely buttery. A couple of bites down I was perfectly full and happy about having submitted to the Maho’s requests of coming here. Then the lobio arrived.

Lobio is a Georgian bean dish that can be served as a side dish or as a stew. Either way, the dish is made up of a combination of red kidney beans, tender cilantro and the tangy touch of garlic. The garlic bites your palate, while the beans smooth things over and the smell of cilantro adds sophistication. Cafe Euro made a hearty side verion of lobio and after eating one serving I thought I couldn’t eat any more that night. And then the khinkali arrived on the table.

Khinkali are Georgian dumplings featuring assorted stuffings of either minced meat, potatoes or cottage cheese (with meat being definitely the most popular). While belonging to the same family as Turkish manti, khinkali provide a different eating experience. Think of them as dough sacks in a size of a large fig hiding a significant amount of meat inside. The dough puffs as it boils and makes space for a delicious broth to develop inside. The idea is to eat khinkali without losing any of the broth. Just like figs, khinkali have a little neat tail on top. You grab them by this tail, turn the dumpling upside down and take a small bite from the side where the broth has collected (careful, its very hot). The ladies at Cafe Euro clearly know what they are doing as the dough is thin, the meat plenty, and the broth delicious.

“There are a few other Georgian places around but everyone comes here,” Maho notes with satisfaction after the third shot of chacha. I could see why. Cafe Euro is probably not the place you would like to end up in on a Saturday or Sunday night – unless you are in a mood for watching a chacha-fueled fight (no kidding). But this is exactly why Cafe Euro remains such a well-kept secret. It’s a Georgian cafe proud enough not to care about the local tastes.



Address: Bostan Sok. (or Bostan Aralığı) Aksaray
Hours: Daily 10 am to the last guest

(photo by Olga Tikhonova)

It was a dark and stormy night. We found ourselves standing cold and shivering, stomachs growling, in the lobby of a shady hotel, our dining plans once again thwarted by the capricious nature of Istanbul’s restaurateurs. What was supposed to be a restaurant inside the hotel serving southeastern Turkish cuisine had now been turned into a forlorn spot devoid of customers and with an unappealing menu written in Russian.

What to do? We stepped outside and took a look around and saw few promising options in this part of town, known as Laleli, a wholesale clothing district dominated by shops selling cut-rate leather and fur coats and by cheapo kebab joints. That’s when we remembered a recent tip we had been given about a new “Uzbek” restaurant in the area. After making a few inquiries with some locals, we found ourselves inside the gleaming Mihman, a Central Asian restaurant that opened its doors only a few months ago.

Things looked promising right off the bat. The vaguely gaudy décor and the frilly tea cozies on the tables telegraphed Central Asian authenticity. This was quickly reinforced by the pot of steaming green tea that was brought to our table, to be drunk – Central Asian style – out of small bowls. The encyclopedic menu, meanwhile, promised a long list of tempting dishes, both familiar classics and intriguing obscure ones, that will make a return visit a must.

Perhaps overcome with hunger and a sense of nostalgia for previous meals we’ve had in the land of the ‘stans, we went ahead and ordered several things. Perhaps we were again overcome by hunger and nostalgia, but we can report that everything we ordered at Mihman – run by an Uzbek who hails from the Uighur city of Kashgar in western China – was a winner. The extremely fresh puffy little round loaves of Uzbek naan seemed as if they had been flown in from Tashkent that morning. The plump Uighur-style manti were superb. Çuçure, a soulful reddish broth that had tiny dumplings floating in it, hit the spot on a rainy night. The very tasty Kashgar kebab, grilled chunks of lamb flavored with an earthy-tasting mix of spices, took us back in time to a long-ago visit to the dish’s namesake city.

We ended the meal by renewing our plov affair with plov, the Uzbek rice dish that conquered Central Asia. Like any good plov, Mihman’s hid layers of complexity beneath a deceptively humble façade, with fragrant basmati rice, slivers of sweet carrot cooked until they are almost candied, assertive cumin seeds and chunks of flavorful meat all working together to create one of the more appealing comfort food dishes we know of.

We take the opening of this enticing plov shack (which is located near an excellent Uighur restaurant) as a very positive sign for Istanbul’s dining scene, which until recently had been devoid of good, authentic places serving food from other parts of the wider region surrounding Turkey, particularly east of the border. Considering how many Uzbeks, Uighurs, Iranians and others call Istanbul home, we’ve always found it a bit strange that it’s very hard to find any restaurants serving food that caters to them.

Much has been made recently about Turkey’s possible drift eastwards. We don’t like to comment on political matters here, but when it comes to culinary ones, we say: drift, baby, drift.

Address: Gençtürk Cad. No. 65, Fatih
Telephone: 212-526-0803
Web: www.mihman.com.tr

(photo by Yigal Schleifer)

Still, we’ve found good reason to ladle high praise on traditional manti, although we are always on the lookout for some downright diabolical dumplings. The folks over at Emek Manti, in the ritzy Bosphorus-front neighborhood of Yenikoy, answered our call for something different with a menu stuffed with novelty.

Paneled in dark wood wainscoting with walls painted dark green, with something easy to listen to, such as Lionel Ritchie and Simply Red, piped throughout the vast dining room, the place feels more like a “classy” airport bar than a hole-in-the-wall culinary discovery.  But there is something utterly inspiring going on in the kitchen, namely saray manti. At a glance, this dish – made up of strips of dough that have been twisted and then fried – looks like it would be named “Barb’s deep-fried Frito’s with ranch dressing,” something whipped up by a whacky Texas housewife. After a closer inspection however, we came to think of the crispy manti as bowtie pasta – the ground lamb folded into the knot of thin manti ribbons. One whiff of the sauce that was on top of the manti and we knew that it wasn’t ranch dressing but a yogurt sauce liberally laced with garlic. At once crispy and soft, rich in flavor, never dull, here is a manti to get excited about.

Unfortunately, in the world of manti-making street, cred is not earned with zany schemes like the saray manti, however delicious they may be. Tradition demands that a dainty little boiled Kayseri manti no bigger than the fingernail be on offer. Emek’s Kayseri manti was about as traditional as it gets – firm and masterfully folded, the garlicky yogurt and meat-flavored dumplings joined in partnership, not battle, on the palate. Spooning out the last of the yogurt sauce we were shocked to find not one single scrap of shell or dreg of filling – the hallmark of sloppy kitchen work. This Gulser hanim, the founder and chief of the kitchen, has got mad manti-folding skills.

On the way out, we saw someone digging into a bowl of glowing green manti, which, we later discovered, was made from dough run through with spinach. Holy ravioli! We will be coming back for that one soon with the hope of discovering more unusual dumplings on the menu. With a bit more freedom from convention, one day Emek Manti Evi could very well be the first dim sum ala Turca.

Address: Koybasi Caddesi No. 218, Yenikoy, Istanbul
Phone: 212-262-6981

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

We’ll never know for certain, but we do know that finding a plate of well-made manti in Istanbul can sometimes be as tough as finding authentic ravioli. Which is why we were very excited to be introduced to Gönül Abla (“Big Sister Gönül” in Turkish), a heavenly manti spot in the leafy Asian side neighborhood of Moda.

Owing to its rustic roots, manti is a rather humble dish (yet one that packs a surprising amount of flavor).  To make the dumplings, an elastic dough is rolled out thin and cut into long strips, from which little pockets of dough filled with minced lamb and onion mixture are made and then dunked in a pot of gently boiling water for a few minutes. When ready, the steaming little dough packets are topped with garlic-infused yogurt, creating a very pleasing combination of hot and cool.

So, why go potentially out of your way to Moda, and then to Gönül Abla for dumplings?  Well, first of all if you’re coming from the European side you have the pleasure of the ferry crossing and a pleasant walk along the seashore to Moda. Then, of course, there’s the manti itself. Most restaurants in Istanbul prepare their manti in advance in the morning, just boiling it up as required. At Gönül Abla, on the other hand, they make it to order, mixing the filling, rolling the dough and cooking it up right there and then.  In short, you’re going out of your way to have probably the freshest handmade manti you’ll find in Istanbul. (The restaurant also serves up other traditional home style dishes as well. The köfte was marvelous, and the çiğ börek, a kind of fried meat pastie, is also worth a mention.)

Like manti itself, Gönül Abla – with its handful of tables and low-key setting – is humble and unassuming, but packs a mighty punch.

Address: Bostan Sokak No: 50, Moda, Istanbul
Telephone: 0216-336-1947

(This guest post was written by Jonathan Lewis, an Istanbul-based photojournalist.Photo by Jonathan Lewis)

With the particularly uncatchy name of Dogu Türkistan Vakfi Aş Evi (or East Turkistan Foundation Food House), it’s clear this restaurant is not aiming for mass-market appeal. Rather, the place functions as a kind of public service agency. Located inside the charming and very pleasant courtyard of a 16^th-century former medresa (religious school), Dogu Türkistan Vakfi Aş Evi (DTVAE from here on) serves up hearty dishes for homesick exiled Uighurs, a Muslim Turkic people who hail from western China’s Xinjiang province, or “East Turkistan” as it is known in Turkey.

Turks and Uighurs share a linguistic bond, and many in Turkey romantically think of the Uighurs as the “original” Turks. But the two people also share a strong culinary bond, with Uighur cooking providing perhaps a blueprint of what “original” Turkish cooking might have tasted like. Where the classic Turkish kitchen reflects a mix various regional influences (Aegean, Middle Eastern, Balkan) and the highfalutin tastes of the Ottoman court, Uighur cooking retains the simplicity of what were originally a nomadic people. So simple, in fact, that the menu at  DTVAE is basically limited to three items – and two of them are different takes on manti, the traditional Turkish dumpling.

The restaurant’s centerpiece dish is lagman, a main staple of Uighur cooking, which is made from handmade noodles that are boiled and served along with a stir-fry of beef, onions and green peppers. On a recent visit to DTVAE, the head-scarved cook was busy in the kitchen rolling out long strips of lagman, which somewhat resemble udon noodles. In another room, an older man was methodically stuffing small pockets of dough with a ground meat mixture to make one of the restaurant’s manti dishes. Boiled and then topped with yogurt and red pepper flakes, the manti was delicious, putting most of the other versions found around town — which seem to favor dough over filling —  to shame. The restaurant’s other manti dish – a much larger dough pocket stuffed with a meat/onion mixture and which reminded us of a Chinese soup dumpling – was also very nice, especially when eaten with a schmear of the oily, red pepper paste that we found in a jar on the table.

DTVAE has a few outside tables, where you can eat under the shade of three massive maple trees, and a handful of tables inside. The restaurant – a peaceful oasis located on a side street not far from the grand Suleymaniye Mosque – is connected to a Uighur cultural center housed inside the medresa, and on a recent visit, the place was plastered with copies of articles from the Turkish press reporting about the recent ethnic violence in Xinjiang, in which some 200 Uighurs and Han Chinese died. Nearby us sat small groups of Uighur men chatting and slurping up their lagman along with bowls of steaming green tea, transported back, as we were, to East Turkistan.

Address: Dedeefendi Cad. No: 4, Eminonu
Telephone: 212-512-6406

(photo by Yigal Schleifer)

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.

Despite its rib shack wooden façade and slightly grungy surroundings, Kaburga Sofrası tries to spiff things up, with cloth napkins on the tables and piano music playing over the sound system. The presentation of the kaburga, meanwhile, is done with a flourish: a waiter brings it to the table on a large platter covered with a silver dome, delivering it to another waiter who then takes over, de-boning the steaming, tender meat and shredding it into bite-size morsels. Along with the flavorful iç pilav – the rice that was stuffed and cooked inside the ribs – the kaburga is served with a side of rice mixed with fresh parsley and roasted almonds, which offer a crunchy contrast to the soft meat.

Of course, lamb also appears in other forms on the menu. In the icli köfte, ground meat, sautéed onion, parsley and spices that are stuffed into a bulgur wheat shell and then poached to make a very large and tasty dumpling. Mumbar, another specialty from the Mardin area, is lamb intestine stuffed with ground meat, rice and mint (and frankly, something whose rubbery funk we’ve never warmed up to, as much as we’ve tried). In the excellent and earthy guveç, cubes of lamb, eggplant, tomatoes and green pepper are slowly cooked in a clay pot until all of the ingredients become soft as butter and almost meld together.

To make things easy, dessert is limited to one choice: a kind of helva made out of sweetened semolina studded with pine nuts and served warm. It’s quite tasty, but chances are that by this point you’ll be feeling as stuffed as a, well, lamb.

Address: Sekerci Sokak No: 8, Aksaray (note: there are plans to close this
location, so please call ahead)
Halaskargazi Caddesi No: 252/4, Şişli
Fevziye Caddesi No:1, Laleli

Telephone: 212-532-7373 (Aksaray)
212-225-9595 (Şişli)
212-520-1515 (Laleli)

Web: www.kaburgasofrasi.com.tr

According to our Turkish-English dictionary, the word “Çerkez” means “Circassian,” but in our book it is synonymous with “delicious.” As evidence, look no further than Fıccın, a friendly restaurant serving the unique cuisine from the mountains of the Caucasus. Many a Turk trace their roots to this culinary Xanadu, including the folks over at Fıccın, who have put together a Turco-Circassian menu that includes specialties from both kitchens.

Cold chicken and walnut spread (Çerkez tavuk), found on many Turkish menus, is here a bit richer and redolent with red pepper and garlic. Tulen, an aromatic chicken soup is an unusual surprise in a country so loyal to the lentil. Shreds of chicken lace the thick slow-cooked stock, whose garlicky essence travels with the steam nose-ward, a whiff of ecstasy.

The Çerkez take on the dumpling is similar to a pierogi, filled with meat or potatoes and served in a bath of yogurt and light red pepper oil. Though the menu describes the restaurant’s namesake dish, fıccın, as Circassian borek, this is not the little flaky pastry sold throughout Turkey. In this case, savory, almost cake-like dough is layered over fragrant ground meat, and then baked like a pizza. One slice of fıccın is best shared among the table.

Unfortunately, the Çerkez dishes on the menu stop here. On the other hand, Fıccın’s Turkish standards – though found on the menus of numerous other restaurants – are particularly well made. Notable among them is the sublime karnıyarık, baked eggplant stuffed with peppers, onions, minced meat and tomatoes.

Though open for dinner, Fıccın thrives on its bustling lunch scene when its three dining rooms and clusters of outdoor tables fill quickly. Turnover is quick, but be sure to come early or you might miss the daily specials.

Address: Kallavi Sok. No:13/1 – 7/1 Beyoğlu Phone: (212) 243 83 53 www.ficcin.com

From Western China all the way to Istanbul, Turkic people roll out dough, fold it into small pouches, boil it and call it mantı. When it comes to dumplings, Turkish tradition dictates that the tortellini-like mantı be no larger than peanut-sized. With its unusually large (and sometimes fried) dumplings, Bodrum Mantı & Café has taken traditional Turkish mantı to soaring new heights of which we strongly approve.

Don’t be put off by the modish décor, the dour bow-tied waiters or the high street address; this is the real article. This 24-hour Arnavutköy staple with a Bosphorus view never fails to serve it up hot, fast, good and cheap. The icli köfte – boiled or fried bulgur and ground meat football-shaped patties – is always made to order, unlike many oil-soaked renditions found around town. Stick a fork in the ciğ börek and watch, or, better yet, smell, the hot airy pocket pastry deflate in an aromatic whoosh, revealing a light filling of ground meat. Like the mantı, these appetizers come jumbo; so be forewarned.

The mantı is offered in a few varieties – whole wheat or white dough, boiled or fried. When fried, we couldn’t discern the wheat from the white dough, but in boiled form the whole wheat offered a pleasant change. Ordering half portions allowed us to try many combinations of fillings and toppings.

The piece de resistance, temel feriye mantı, is fried just enough for the thin shell to crisp up and the stuffing of spinach, onions and cheese to meld nicely without being greasy.  This mantı even holds up well under a generous topping of garlic yogurt sauce. Supermantı, indeed.

Address: 1. Cadde 111, Arnavutköy
Phone: 212 263 2918
www.bodrummantı.com