Dear Istanbul Eats,

Dear Concerned,
Thanks for the great question. Pandeli is indeed a venerable spot and, for a certain generation of visitors to Istanbul, often the first culinary stop made in the city. Which is to say that we haven’t been there in years. In order to answer your question, we asked our resident guest blogger, “Meliz,” to check things out over at Pandeli and come up with strategies for others who plan to visit the restaurant. Her report is below….

Someone mentioned the film Midnight Express to me the other day, and my first (ok, second) thought was hmm, wonder how Pandeli is these days? Let me explain.

When I first arrived in Istanbul, there were two things I used to hear about with some consistency: the film Midnight Express, and the restaurant Pandeli (not due to any connection between the two, mind you). Interestingly, as the years have passed and the city has gussied itself up a bit, one hears about both of these cultural touchstones less and less. I cannot argue that it is a shame that nowadays visitors are thinking more about what events to attend at the Biennial than “Joey, have you ever been… in a Turkish prison?” But I have to say, after a recent visit to Pandeli, after a decade-long hiatus, the place deserves a little revival of interest.

This is not to say that every single item on the menu is earthshaking. Nor that every item on the menu is priced within the average diner’s budget. But, the menu has not changed in a decade, and the things that I recall as special are still consistently so today. And those things are tasty enough to justify a visit if one happens to be skulking around the Spice Bazaar, especially with out-of-town guests. Because, let’s face it: Eminonu holds quite a treasure-trove of street food, but sometimes, after bumping elbows with its teeming masses, even the most inveterate chowhound might crave a linen tablecloth and a bit of quietude.

At Pandeli, as is the case with so many places in Istanbul/the world, you are paying for the ambiance and view. But only to an extent, and as these things go, I for one would rather pony up for Pandeli’s turquoise tiles and 17^th-century domed ceilings than fork over my precious lira for a panoramic city view blocked by grazing socialites. But that’s just me. So how do you ensure that all you pay for the ambiance is the two-lira cover? Let’s get to it.

Be forewarned: the first page of the menu had me breaking a bit of a sweat. At first blush, this appears to be a listing of appetizers priced between 30 and 60 lira each. And it is just that. But the appetizers are not your average meze. And 30-60 lira per portion for things like caviar and smoked bonito is not utterly outrageous. Just sort of outrageous. The list does smack of a funny nostalgia, a sort of executive’s lunch circa 1962, but as Pandeli does not offer martinis or champagne, I would skip it (and insist that no unordered plates of anything stay on the table).

For small plates, Pandeli offers a variety of vegetables cooked either with olive oil or butter – not something you find everywhere. That said, this is not an esnaf lokanta, not really, and while the veggies may be good, they will not be the most beautiful you have ever eaten. Better to go straight for the eggplant salad, a creamy puree of smoky deliciousness. Having said all that, the donerli patlican borek (henceforth DPB), listed as a small plate, is a) a good solid-sized portion, and b) the single best item on the menu. You know how quiche often comes close to perfect, but is held back by an eggy or over-cheesed heaviness? The DPB at Pandeli delivers on the elusive textural promise of quiche. You have a buttery but not lumpen yufka crust at the bottom, on top of which is a baked layer of that amazing eggplant puree, mixed with a subtle amount of kasar, the hard melty cheese of Turkey. There is enough kasar so that the top bakes to crispy perfection, but not so much that the eggplant puree loses its fluffiness. This stuff is darn good, but then, then, they heap on a generous but not gratuitous portion of doner slices. The crispy texture and the meaty flavor of the doner bring the perfect counterbalance to the creaminess of the eggplant borek. And at 10 lira for a portion the size of a Dickens novel, DPB also wins the prize for best deal on the menu.

If you are in for a somewhat more substantial meal, there are a few main courses particularly worth noting: the hunkar begendi (lamb bits over eggplant puree), the kuzu tandir (roasted lamb) and kagitta levrek (sea bass baked in parchment). None of these are cheap, but they are good. The sea bass dish is the single most famous dish at Pandeli, and it is done in a style one would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. But at 38 lira, this is where one starts to pay for the ‘experience’. For my money, the prices on these main dishes indicate a splurge, but I am not convinced that the dishes themselves warrant that splurge.

Time to hit a sweet note, no?

At Pandeli, you will want to save room for dessert. We went for the sample plate, being the gluttons that we are, and while all the items on the plate were tasty, when I return, I will go straight for the standouts. The kabak tatlisi (stewed pumpkin) is a light, beautifully textured take on a dish I usually find to be a bit too much, like a sugary punch to the solar plexus. Not so at Pandeli, where it has a great texture and a balanced sweetness that allows the pumpkin to flaunt its flavorful self. Pandeli’s sweet specialty is an almond cookie, a bademli kurabiye of the crumbly variety. The spicing is a light touch, and the ground almonds in the cookie are crunchy-licious, great with after-lunch tea or Turkish coffee. The third standout is the kazandibi, and here I am about to get myself into trouble. Let me just say, reading Istanbul Eats was a big part of how I learned to stop worrying and love the Turkish chicken-breast pudding. Now one might even call me a pudding snob (I’m looking at you, Saray). So before whipping yourselves into a frenzy of clucking rage, take a deep breath and hear me out when I say I really like the kazandibi at Pandeli. I fully acknowledge that it is not chewy. It does not fight the spoon. In fact, it is more of a crème brulee texture, a bit custardy. But it is the real deal, the chicken breast was in there. Proof’s in the pudding, so to speak. And, when I head back to Pandeli, I’ll be calling dibs on the kazandibi.

Pandeli is a lovely space (worth reserving a table in the rooms facing outside onto the square), the service is old school and nonintrusive, and offers a quiet refuge from the madding crowds below. In the wild and woolly world of ‘touristed’ restaurants in Istanbul, there is much to be said for consistency, and Pandeli seems to have that down pat, judging by my experiences, decades apart. The place does deserve a visit, both for its pleasantly anachronistic vibe, and its time-tested tasties. I will definitely head back soon, most likely dragging a gaggle of guests shell-shocked by the Eminonu backstreets, for a lunch of their donerli patlican borek, followed by a little sweetness with my coffee. No more, no less. The 2 lira cover thus ends up being very little money, very well spent.

The More You Know… Pandeli is a lunch spot, though they get the busiest around 2 P.M. It is worth making a reservation for a table in the front rooms, though not necessary. To reach the restaurant, one must climb a somewhat daunting staircase. Alcohol is served, but expensive, and selection is not particularly exciting.

Address: Misir Carsisi No. 1 (just inside the main entrance to the Spice Bazaar, door is tucked away on the left)
Phone: (212) 527 39 09
(Open for lunch daily, except for Sundays, when bazaar is closed as well)

(Photo by Yigal Schleifer)

But don’t tell that to Ziver usta, who’s been turning the köfte – something like Turkey’s equivalent of the hamburger – at the grill of the Sirkeci neighborhood’s shoe-box sized Meşhur Filibe Köftecisi for the last 30 years. The dough-faced Ziver, 53, is actually the restaurant’s junior employee – “head waiter” Mehmet has been there for 40 years – but his long tenure means he’s only one of a select handful of grill masters who have worked at Filibe over the course of its 100-year history.

“Just like a shop goes from father to son, the grill goes from one master to another,” Ziver, dressed in a white apron and a small peaked cap that looks like it actually might have been salvaged from the kitchen of a 1950’s American drive-in burger stand, says proudly. Does he get bored doing the same thing six days a week? Ziver seems surprised to hear the question. “Never,” he says. “I do it with love. I like serving folks.”

Indeed, we definitely felt the love in Filibe’s outstanding köfte, juicy little buttons of meat that come off Ziver’s coal-fired grill with just the right amout of char. (Actually, although the name Filibe refers to the Balkan town where the restaurant’s owners hail from, the cook told us it really means “juicy.”) The piyaz (white bean salad, served with shredded lettuce and carrot) that came on the side was impeccably fresh and, as always, provided just the right counterpoint to the little meatballs. The restaurant’s central location — not far from the Sirkeci train station and the bustling open-air “food court” on Hocapasa Sokak — further adds to its appeal.

The century-old, two-item menu here is augmented by the presence of revani, an extremely homey dessert made out of a dense white cake that’s been soaked in a sugary syrup. “It’s good for your sex drive,” waiter Mehmet promised us with a sly nod, Ziver chuckling appreciatively, as if it was the first time he heard that joke in the 30 years that they have been working together.

Great köfte, time-proven service and bawdy humor – who can get bored with that?

Address: Ankara Cad. No: 112, Sirkeci
Telephone: 212-519-3976

(photo by Yigal Schleifer)

Considering the type of restaurant we were in – a pudding shop – the menu’s concept became clear. Any self-respecting Turkish pudding man must serve tavuk göğsü – a pudding made out of chicken breast and milk – first and foremost. A man after our own heart, Ali Bey seems to have worked backward from dessert, filling in the rest of the menu with what was left over after the chicken’s breasts were rendered into pudding. After all, there is a lot more to a chicken than the breast, and here we found a wide and economical offering of everything but the beaks, feathers and feet.

Though immediately drawn to the cornerstone poultry pudding, we restrained ourselves and started with the soup.
In Turkish, one does not “eat” soup; soup is “drank” – an homage to the stock, presumably. And at Kismet the stock is superior – simple thin chicken broth, devoid of any thickening agents, flavor spikes or, really, anything at all. This is down-to-the-bone, pure chicken soup – the soft shreds of chicken and thin noodles are merely the icing on the cake.

As a main course, the gizzards, taslik, came sizzling in a skillet with chopped peppers and tomatoes looking like a classic menemen, with thin slices of rich, dark meat in place of the eggs.

The defining moment of the meal materialized with the presentation of Ali Bey’s chicken breast pudding. Beside the plate of thick, white pudding the waiter set a shaker of cinnamon. We take our pudding neat, however, and Ali Bey seemed to approve watching from his post behind the counter. Unlike other fibrous chicken breast puddings around town, this one was remarkably smooth and akin, in flavor, to a fine rice pudding.

After giving us change back for a 10 TL for the bill, Ali Bey asked if we enjoyed the pudding.

“Of course,” we replied, meeting eyes with a man who, like us, plans a meal around the dessert.

Address: Kucukpazar Cad. 68, Eminonu, Istanbul
Phone: 212-513-6773

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

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)

At the airport, Turkish Delight, or lokum, may be sold in neat vacuum-sealed boxes, but in the front window at Altan Şekerleme it is stacked into psychedelic pyramids, laid out into long white rows that are impossibly pink or deep amber on the inside, and even built into little, Technicolor log cabins. Feast your eyes on this dreamy sugar-dusted world for a while and prime yourself for the stimulation of the senses that awaits inside.

The shop itself – with its aged marble-topped counters and worn wooden cabinets – bears a nostalgic patina strangely absent in this ancient city. Unlike so many places that make sad attempts at recreating the “Old Istanbul,” Altan is an effortless standard-bearer of late Ottoman authenticity. That’s probably because the same family has been running this operation in the same shop for four generations. “How could I change these counters? My grandfather built them himself,” says Hakan Altanoglu, whose 86-year-old father, Abdullah, now owns the shop. The secret recipes, the store, the production floor upstairs and all its trappings have passed from father to son since the Altanoglu family opened shop in 1865. “For us, this is not just a candy business. It’s a family tradition, and an Ottoman tradition we are working at,” says Abdullah Altanoglu from behind the counter.

So don’t come this way looking for a bag of gummy bears or any Pop Rocks, or grandpa behind the counter might have a heart attack. This is a place for traditional, artisanal Turkish candies, with a primary focus on sweet pliant squares of Turkish Delight and glowing jewels of akide, Turkish rock candy.

From the lokum side, the perfumed gül, or rosewater Turkish Delight, is almost a sensual experience, right up there with a first kiss. The sakizli-, or mastic gum flavored lokum is interesting as a novelty, but not our favorite. However, the fistikli lokum, filled with hazelnuts, is a showstopper. The sublime, almost gummy confection surrounding the crunchy nut core would convince even the most committed chocoholic to buy a box of the stuff.

If lokum doesn’t interest you, Altan also prides itself on tahin helva, a sweet paste of crushed sesame seeds, studded with pine nuts. They also make a wide variety of akide, which sit in handsome glass jars on the countertop. The bright red akide flavored with cinnamon, or tarçin, has a clean spicy flavor prompting flashbacks of grandma’s candy dishes.

A visit to Altan is as close as one can come to visiting a shrine dedicated to the granddaddy of the gumdrop. And as surely as the Altanoglu family will pass the keys to another generation to guard its centuries-old secrets, their sweet sugar-dusted lokum will remain not only a Turkish but, we hope and pray, a global delight.

Address: Kiblecesme Cad. No: 96, Kantarcilar (Kucuk Pazari)/Eminonu
Telephone: 212-522-5909

(Editor’s Note: Due to a number of reliable reports that things are slipping over at this formerly recommendable spot, we are now urging diners to approach the restaurant with lowered expectations. We will update this alert if we hear or taste otherwise.)

Though Iskender kebab is a registered trademark of the famous Kebapci Iskender restaurant in Bursa, imitations are ubiquitous. In Istanbul, Iskender kebab – a dish based on döner, strips of roasted lamb shaved off from a vertical spit – is almost as common as designer knock-offs in the Grand Bazaar. But unlike a $20 Dolce & Gabbana track suit with dubious stitchwork, the “pirated” Iskender kebab over at Kasap Osman’s in the Sirkeci neighborhood is most certainly the real thing, if not better.

The restaurant is located around the corner from the Sirkeci train station, on a side street that’s best described as an open-air food court for serious eaters. Restaurants offering Kurufasuliye (Turkish style baked beans), pide (or Turkish pizza) and other local specialties stand cheek by jowl on this crowded little street filled with outdoor tables. But something extra special radiates from Kasap Osman (“Osman the Butcher” in Turkish), where, turning slowly on an upright spit, stands a blue ribbon döner carefully watched by the usta.

Döner, slices of lamb stacked like pancakes on a tall skewer and slowly turned before a vertical grill, is the most important factor in any Iskender kebab. Though gas and electric grills are more common these days, we far prefer the smoky flavor imparted by the traditional cooking method employed by Kasap Osman, where charcoal is used to roast the döner. Naturally the quality of the meat plays an important role as well, and who better to trust at the spit than Osman, who actually is a former butcher. Osman and his team also have experience working in their favor, having turned döner spit for a loyal, hungry audience of local shopkeepers and office workers everyday for the last 25 years from the same corner on Hocapasa.

Timed to coincide with the lunch hour rush, at around noon the usta starts shaving off the first long ribbons of succulent döner and collecting them in the pan in his other hand. The döner is then sent to the kitchen where it becomes Iskender kebab and other döner-based dishes. For Iskender, our favorite, the cooked meat is laid over a bed of chopped flatbread in a clay dish and garnished with peppers and tomatoes and dressed with a thin tomato sauce. The dish is then quickly fired in the oven crisping the saucy bread on the bottom and softening the garnish. Finally the whole dish is doused with butter browned in a skillet and a quick dollop of thick yogurt is added to one side. We can often hear our Iskender sizzling on its way to the table.

So noble a kebab, it’s quite logical that someone trademarked it and no surprise at all that the trademark is infringed upon everyday from Melbourne to Miami. But if you don’t have time for the official Iskender kebab pilgrimage to Bursa, head over to Kasap Osman for the best genuine fake Iskender in the city.

Address: Hocapasa Sokak 22, Sirkeci
Telephone: 212-519-3216

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