The medieval Ottoman travel writer, Evliya Celebi, wrote of Beyoglu streets filled with humble little stew and dolma restaurants, bustling at lunchtime with merchants getting a fill. He counted more than five hundred of them. Surveying today’s culinary landscape for its Ottoman roots, the eyes fall directly on the esnaf lokantasi, or tradesmen’s restaurants, that now serve the working man much as they have for centuries. If Evliya Celebi were walking the streets of Istanbul today, hungry, we are sure he’d feel perfectly at home at Tunclar Lokantasi on Elmadag Caddesi.  

Like most esnaf lokantasi in the area, Tunclar is a packed with regulars during lunch rush. The single waiter hustles food out from the open kitchen at the back and the boss mans the register and a bank of telephones at the front. Specials change daily, from stuffed zucchini under a blanket of thick yogurt (kabak dolmasi) to an excellent moussaka, as well as white beans over rice and stuffed cabbage leaves – this is unfiltered home food. At Tunclar the bread is also notable – whole-wheat loaves studded with sunflower seeds. From the grill we had chicken thighs with fresh cut French fries and chased the whole meal down with a house specialty, kabak tatlisi, or stewed pumpkin sprinkled with crushed walnuts.

The post-meal discussion turned to the five hundred or so proto-esnaf lokantasi that Celebi visited back in the 16^th century. How many had we been to in Beyoglu alone and how many had we missed? Then we caught a glimpse of the exhausted waiter in a daze of his own. The rear windows by the kitchen are covered in a trompe-l’oeil sticker of a Hawaiian beach scene – a silhouette of a sunbathing hardbody backlit by the afternoon sun, palm trees leaning down to kiss a crystal blue sea. There’s something that surely hasn’t changed since Ottoman times: a waiter’s dream of vacation.

Address: Elmadag Cad. 9, Elmadag
Telephone: +902122410295

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

Merih, in fact, is the polar opposite of most of its neighbors, a homey refuge for neighborhood locals looking for good food without too much fuss (and without paying too much). Like a good Italian trattoria or French Bistro, Merih is the kind of place that you wouldn’t think twice about dropping into for a quick – or extended – meal, with friendly yet professional service, top-notch food and affordable booze to wash it down with.

In business since 1972, Merih very much evokes that era, the walls lined with wood paneling, a large painting of a dapper Mustafa Kemal Ataturk prominently displayed, and long rows of raki bottles lined up on shelves like trophies. While the restaurant may be a meyhane, most of Merih’s regulars do away with the meze tray business and head straight to the kitchen in the back, where a small steam table holds an assortment of prepared dishes and a large glass-lined cooler displays the day’s appetizers and a selection of meats ready to be grilled.

Merih may be low-key, but its kitchen means business, turning out superb renditions of meyhane classics. The restaurant’s pilaki (white beans in a tomato sauce) was among the finest we’ve had in a long time, the not-too-soft beans having a very satisfying bite to them, the sauce they were in amped up by a generous amount of garlic. An order of fresh spinach stewed in olive oil, served with a dollop of tangy yogurt, showed the same level of attention to taste. Sigara boregi (phyllo dough wrapped around tangy white cheese) are often brought to the table looking as if they had been fried in motor oil salvaged from an auto repair shop. Here they came out golden, crisp and utterly delicious. Our main course, lamb kebab, was another highlight, the meat tender, juicy and expertly grilled. Even dessert, a traditional milk pudding flavored with mastic, seemed to pack an extra gustatory punch.

We finished our dinner feeling deeply satisfied and thinking Merih is the kind of place we could come back to every day. We suspect that is exactly what many of the other folks eating there that night actually do.

Address: Kamer Hatun Cad. No: 5/A
Telephone: +90-212-245-4325

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

Just walk on by to nearby Ciya, your instinct might tell you. But that would be a grave miscalculation. Started in 1919 by Fehmi bey, a refugee from Greece, this restaurant has been run by his descendants for three generations, preserving the founder’s recipes. Serving mainstream favorites and hard-to-find specialties, this is a place steeped in the history and the cuisine of Istanbul. It may look like a typical esnaf lokantasi, if a wacky one, but there is much stored in the culinary memory bank of this place.

There are two ways to approach the imposing steam table here. Either go with the recognizable classics such as kuzu tandir, lamb baked in a brick oven, and the Turkish spin on meatloaf, Dalyan kofte. Or you can take the route less traveled, the offal way, as we did on one recent lunch that started with a rich and garlicky bowl of trotter soup. Prescribed locally as a hangover cure, we found this soup equally soothing if you’re stone cold sober. Moving through the courses, rather than the same old buttery rice with a drizzle of baked beans overtop, we went with the rapturous icli pilav, one of Turkey’s most artful, and delicious, rice dishes. At Fehmi it was loaded down with currants and laced with little pieces of liver.

Back at the steam table to select our main course, the usta went over the options again for us, his voice muffled by a surgical mask. What was that he said? Ciger sarma? Stuffed liver? While our intellect wrestled with how a liver would be stuffed and with what, our stomach took over and said, “evet.” Giddy with excitement over the possibility of finding a new favorite dish – anything stuffed with liver or liver stuffed with anything is a really promising start – we returned to the table followed by a waiter in bow tie and vest carrying our trophy dish.

What was on our plate was lightly browned over the top, with an egg sauce, we later learned. The underside was like drenched bread becoming one with the inside. It gave way easily to the fork, releasing what looked like icli pilav and cubed liver into the thin pink juice on the plate. But the big difference here is the casing of this sarma, kuzu gomlek, which translates to “the sheep’s shirt.” This is the caul fat, a thin webby membrane that protects the internal organs of a milk-fed lamb. In Fehmi usta’s day, this gomlek would come along once a year so it was a somewhat precious article and ciger sarma was a seasonal dish, traditionally.

Today, kuzu ciger sarma is on the menu everyday at Fehmi, and, as far as we can tell, it is the holy grail of the menu. As we sopped up the juice in our plate after devouring the rich sarma, swearing that the Turks had figured out how to make liver tastier than the French with their foie gras (sorry, we get a little carried away sometimes), the manager and son of Fehmi came over to see how we liked the dish. We told him that we thought we’d found our new favorite liver preparation and thanked him for it.

Taking a second look at the place on the way out, we made mental note of the coordinates. Yanyali Fehmi is not a replacement for the Kadikoy magic of Ciya, but it is an excellent supplement.

Address: Yaglikci Ismail Sok. 1, Kadikoy
Telephone: +90 216 336 3333
Web: fehmilokantasi.com
Hours: 9am-10pm

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

Located across the street from the Capa General Hospital since 1975, Ilkadim’s dining room is carefully – if a bit grumpily – attended to by career waiter Mustafa Nalbant, who has worked there since opening day. Owner Osman Bilgin said of Mustafa bey, “He has a diploma in waiting tables.”

So rather than pick from the dozen or so mounds of roasted meats, vegetables, pilavs and stews at the open kitchen, we consulted Mustafa bey for advice. What are all those doctors eating?

“Hunkar begendi, efendim,” replied Mustafa.

And what is Mustafa’s personal favorite?

“Hunkar begendi, efendim.”

Our prescription was written. How could we order anything else?

We agreed to the hunkar begendi and asked to start with an esnaf classic, arnavut cigeri, “Albanian liver,” and one kadin budu kofte, a battered and fried patty of meat and rice, that we find irresistible. On its own, the kadin budu was not spectacular, but the liver and cubed potatoes glowed orange with that magical combination of pepper paste, onions and oil. The liver was soft and its light breading held firm against the spicy bath. In this case, the gravy made the liver and even lent a hand to its neighbor on the plate, the kadin budu kofte. This was all a fine start and well worth the trip if you are a doctor across the street at the hospital. But it takes more than a tasty liver to get us on the tramvay during lunch rush.

The name hunkar begendi means “the sultan liked it” and, with a name like that, imaginations run wild both in the kitchen and the dining room (speculation on the origins of the name and a recipe here). We’ve had it served in elaborate copper bowls, the eggplant so overdone with cheese that each bite stretched out from the vessel like a bite of pizza. But the chef at Ilkadim is not dreaming of Sultans and palace kitchens. He knows his clients don’t want too much cream and cheese in their eggplant begendi. The slow roasted lamb should not be too fatty or obscured by anything, even a garnish. This is a stripped down, simplified hunkar begendi – maybe more suited to a citizen than a Sultan – but in our opinion, one of the best in town. The lamb was fork tender and totally clean in flavor, offset by the eggplant, so smoky you’d think it was prepared using Scottish peat. Delicious, in a word.

If the Sultan doesn’t love this one, he deserves to be deposed. Doctor’s orders.

Address: Millet Cad. 153 C, Capa
Telephone: (212) 589-4838

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

(Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by “Meliz,” an intrepid explorer of Sultanahmet’s culinary backstreets who would like to keep her anonymity.)

The neighborhood around Sultanahmet and the Grand Bazaar introduces an interesting plot-twist into the slow-cooked Choose Your Own Adventure that is the esnaf lokanta experience. As described on this website, an esnaf lokanta is the Turkish workingman’s lunch spot, to be found in every hard-working neighborhood, nation-wide.

Despite being the city’s touristic ground-zero and a neighborhood not often associated with much of anything authentic, I am here to insist: Sultanahmet IS still an esnaf (working-man’s) sort of place. There are hordes of starving tourists, to be sure, but there are just as many hungry shop-guys, carpet-menders, hotel managers, printers, book-binders, lawyers, cops, dentists, and diverse and assorted clerical types – all of whom, occasionally, cannot face another tost or doner sandwich, and need a real lokanta lunch. At the same time, Turkish men are oftentimes as finicky as Goldilocks when it comes to the lokanta’s slow-cooked food: if a dish is too oily or too watery, too spicy or too bland, too runny or too lumpy, the waiter will hear about it, as will everyone at the table. The true esnaf will not just eat lokanta fare at any old place.

So, where do the workingmen of Sultanahmet all go? Below are two options:

Sefa

The Major Guide Books tend to focus on Havuzlu and Bahar – perfectly decent spots right inside or close to the Grand Bazaar. And on any given day, each of these places will have a few clutches of lunching locals. But I suggest that you leave these places to the modern-day Baedekker set. Head for Sefa instead.

At Sefa, there are no dishes offered up to appease a tourist sensibility. Ergo, every dish is made as (or perhaps, ahem, better than) every Turkish mother would make it, and everything is delicious – choose according to your own taste, confident that whatever you choose, it will rock. For example: last visit, a stewed celeriac dish altered my world-view. Sefa is bustling all day, every day – but do not be intimidated by the ranks of be-suited locals hunched over the plates, cleaning them up with single-minded devotion. Traffic moves swiftly and efficiently through Sefa (another sign of its esnaf cred). So head on in, belly up to the glass display case in back, and feed your inner workingman.

Some tips: do not be shy about putting together a karişik (mixed) plate, with small bits of a number of things, or ordering a few az (just-a-little) portions to share. Variety is the spice of life, so try as many dishes as you want!

Address: Nurosmaniye Caddesi #17, Cagoglu
Telephone: (212) 520-0670
(Open for lunch only, get there early (before 1 pm) for better selection)

Akdeniz

The Ottoman Archives* were, for years, located smack in the middle of Sultanahmet, and, as such, generations of starving students of Ottoman history (as well as various others) faced the challenge of finding a cheap and reliable lunch spot in close proximity to the archives. Akdeniz was that place for decades.

I first learned of Akdeniz through a friend who often needs a bowl of lentil soup before facing the Grand Bazaar, and when in need, heads there. Recently, though, an Ottoman historian friend and I stopped by for lunch – a bit of a nostalgic indulgence: my friend used to have lunch at Akdeniz every day, when camped out in the Archives in the 1980s. Turns out, they still do many things well (they also run an excellent pide operation next door: Karadeniz). The slow-cooking side of things might not offer up the daily smorgasbord of elaborate options that one finds at Sefa, but Akdeniz does offer five or six dishes, all simple, very well-made, and cheap – ideal for a quick, unfussy lunch (an overflowing mixed plate is usually around 10tl). And unlike most places in the neighborhood, at Akdeniz there are no smirking young bucks, no jaded, shifty glances, and as far as I can tell, minimal English spoken.

Both Akdeniz and Karadeniz are located on one of the many pedestrian side-streets off Divan Yolu, right at the Sultanahmet tram stop. Once you make it there, you can sit at any of the shady outdoor tables and relax – the staff does not tolerate unsolicited chit-chat with their guests, so no one will pester you (and if someone does, the cashier will run them off, if you throw him a help-me look). If you want pide, you can always sit at either establishment and order from both, if you wish.

*Yes, yes, I know. One archive of many. I refer to the Basbakanlik Archives.

Address: Haci Tahsinbey Sokak, Sultanahmet
Telephone: (212) 528-6290
Web: www.karadenizpide.net

Click here for a list of some of our favorites.

(Editor’s Note: This review originally appeared on June 12, 2009.)

Regulars at Özkonak, a well-loved fixture in Cihangir’s ever-changing restaurant scene, must cluck in disapproval at the sight of a new generation of customers who walk right past the pudding display at the front and head for the steam table and its selection of prepared savory dishes in back. Though the lunch specials here are quite tasty, Özkonak is a pudding shop at heart and should be approached accordingly. To fill up on stuffed eggplant and beans before dessert is to deny yourself the milky sweet pleasures that have defined this a neighborhood institution for almost fifty years.

(Full review here.)

Take the example of the Bayrampasa district, not the sort of place you want to be in around lunchtime without a reliable tip. In this neighborhood, the streets are wide, most of the buildings look like public ministries and the roar of the E5 highway is ever-present — in short, this is not an ideal area for casual culinary exploration on foot. But Bayrampasa has industry (and one of Istanbul’s two Ikea’s) and where there are workers, there is sure to be a good esnaf lokantasi.

We followed a lead from a man on the street to a small cluster of shops with a couple of restaurants among them. From there our instinct led us straight to Durak Lokantasi.

Nothing but hunger can prepare you for what awaits inside of this small esnaf lokantasi. This is a restaurant stripped down like a Harley to the bare essentials, and it is just loud.  On one recent visit, sawdust underfoot and the fog of a dozen simmering menu items greeted us at the door. As we lingered by the steam table considering our choices, customers continually bumped past to pay and leave, enter and find a seat. Lacking a bell to smack, a cook howled for pick-up and pounded a stainless steel counter with the ham of his hand. Finally we were physically shown to a spot at a table filled with other diners. This is no place to linger.

Peaking on lunch-rush adrenaline, Ahmet bey, the waiter here for the last 20 years, rattled off the days offerings loudly, “Islim kebab, very nice, kapuska, very nice, kuzu tandir, famous, guvec, doner. Get the islim kebab, OK?”

We agreed to the islim kebab and the kapuska, having spotted this delicious looking dish of shredded cabbage au jus garnished with roughly-chopped dried red peppers on our way in.

There is not much of a wait between the moment that your order is placed and when it is set in front of you. Through the manic hubbub of the open kitchen all we heard was a deep slurp of soup-drinking and the crackle of bread-tearing — the sound of people eating with purpose. While we were there, most patrons hadn’t even bothered taking their winter coats and hats off for the meal, as if they were squeezing a full meal into a ten-minute cigarette break.

Islim kebab is the result of what might happen if a sushi chef were sent to work at a Turkish esnaf lokantasi for a day — a predictable assembly of local stew ingredients with unexpected architecture.  A stew of tender beef, peas, potatoes peppers and tomatoes were artfully enveloped inside two long slices of sautéed eggplant and bound by a toothpick and a crown of tomato at the top. It was as tasty as it was dainty.

But don’t wait for any stylish presentation when it comes to kapuska. The name, which rhymes with babooshka, reminded us of Eastern European stuffed cabbage, without the fuss of rolling them up. This is home food at its finest and most affordable. A full meal costs less than 10 TL.

Before finding Durak Lokantasi, a lunch in Bayrampasa meant Ikea kofte with lingonberry jam. But we try to make every meal count. A lunch at Durak is well worth scurrying over a couple of medians and up an exit ramp.

Address: Tuna Caddesi 27, Bayrampasa
Telephone: 212-565-3495

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

But she must have been an exception. On one recent visit to NATO Lokantasi, we were pleased to find the place in high spirits. The wood-paneled dining room was filled to capacity with men in ties, tables overflowing with plates, spent hand wipes, crusts of bread, and panicked waiters trying to manage all of the consumption — a glutinous celebration of freedom’s victory.

You can’t help but join in on the party, because everything served at NATO is simply delicious. Like most esnaf lokantasi (tradesmen’s restaurants), the menu is composed of daily specials such as sautéed seasonal vegetables, a couple of soups and plenty of meat dishes. It’s always best to make your way to the steam table in the back and see what looks good.

We started our meal with a hearty yogurt-based noodle soup called Erzincan corbasi, followed by the old reliable hamsili pilav, a savory baked rice cake topped with anchovy filets, as a bridge to the main course. Undecided between, hunkar begendi, tender roasted chunks of lamb over a creamy puree of eggplant, and a plate of doner, we ordered a half portion of both (just say, “az”).

With such a variety of main courses, it might seem like a waste to order doner, but a good esnaf lokantasi usually serves a high quality doner in thin slices over rice.  NATO’s doner was everything doner should be — not too greasy yet fatty enough to keep the meat moist and flavorful. This is not the “donner kebab” of drunken nights in Dublin. The hunkar begendi was perfectly fine, but, truth be told, the one at Karakoy Lokantasi, just a few blocks away is much better.

Two teas and a rice pudding later, we surveyed our table and those around us. Customs agents, small businessmen, office workers from Bankalar Caddesi — everyone looked sated and happy, as if they’d just closed a big deal. Say what you will about the NATO (the organization), that’s a discussion for another lunch, but most everyone agrees that NATO (the lokanta) is just as relevant today as it was when it first opened in 1952.

Address: Karanlik Sokak 4, Karakoy
Telephone: 212-249-6424

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

We were feeling a bit lost for a period, not knowing where to go for a quick honest lunch of hearty Laz fare. The Black Sea area is Turkey’s culinary misfit – not really about kebabs or meze. If anything, the food there seems to have been mysteriously transplanted from the American Deep South. We’re talking corn bread, collard greens and smoky bean stews. It’s simple, filling, down-home food and Sisore was a great – and affordable – spot to get acquainted with it. We’ve had decent meals there since the split, but it was clear we needed to find a new spot to get a quality fix of Black Sea food.

Then we got a call from Hizir bey, the shaggy-haired owner who left Pera Sisore, taking with him the kitchen’s A team, including the feisty old lady who prepares the Black Sea specialty dishes and the man working the pide oven. This new venture, called Hayvore, is another Laz word, meaning “I am here.” After a quick sampling of the dishes we recognized from Pera Sisore — chickpeas in a glowing red gravy, meaty stuffed chard leaves, large hunks of cornbread and Black Sea sardines lightly fried — we knew we’d be coming here, regularly.

Address: Turnacibasi Sokak 4, Beyoglu
Telephone: 212-245-7501

(photo by Ansel Mullins)