Curious to find out what was going on, we returned several nights later, armed with nothing more than a notepad, pen and an empty stomach. As we made our way up Ataturk Bulvari, a busy road in the Fatih neighborhood that runs through the Byzantine-era Valens Aqueduct and down to the Golden Horn, the cart – and the crowd – were again there at the same spot. The cart, it turned out, serves up a pilaf of rice, chickpeas and chicken along with ayran (a salty yogurt drink) – comfort food that comes at a very comforting price.

There are probably hundreds of pilav carts crisscrossing Istanbul every day, but this one seemed different. While the owners of other carts usually roll along trolling for business, this one stays put every night, letting the crowds come to him. “We’ve been in the same spot for 15 years,” said the cart’s operator, a hardworking man in a starched white chef’s smock, who would only give his first name, Ayvaz, for fear of getting in trouble with the authorities. “We’re famous – that’s why there’s always a crowd here.” (Click here to read the rest of this archived review.)

Although this soup is probably best drunk at its source, we’ve recently come across a spot in Istanbul that serves up a very fine bowl of beyran – and not just for breakfast. Located in the bustling Aksaray neighborhood, Ehli Kebap is a grill house who’s advertised specialty is skewered liver in the style of Diyarbakir, a city a few hours to the east of Gaziantep. But tucked into the restaurant’s corner is a soup master with some serious Gaziantep chops who has his own cooking station – gaily festooned with strings of dried red peppers – devoted to beyran making.

Each serving of soup is made to order, cooked up inside its own metal bowl, the usta creating it like a kind of hot and soupy ice cream sundae. First up is a schmear of suet, the shortening-like fat found around the kidney of a sheep, to give the soup some silkiness. Piled on top of that is a mound of white rice and strands of lamb meat that has been slow-cooked for hours, until it is utterly tender, which give the soup its heft. To ratchet up the taste, the usta then adds a dollop of minced garlic to the bowl, and tops the whole thing with liberal sprinkles of light and dark red-pepper flakes. The bowl is then put on a blazing gas burner and a ladleful of broth of an unfathomable depth of flavor is added to it, the whole thing coming to a quick boil. By the time the beyran soup arrives at the table, it has achieved a lovely rusty red color, looking – and even tasting – something like a Turkish version of a Louisiana gumbo.

We generally don’t get too excited about soup, but recent visits to Ehli Kebap to sample their beyran have left us thinking that this may be among the finest soups we’ve had in town, something we would be more than happy to slurp down on a daily basis – breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Address: Simitçi Şakir Sokak 32, Aksaray
Telephone: (212) 631-3700

(photo by Yigal Schleifer)

Click here for a list of some of our favorites.

Entering through the hall lined with photos of esteemed guests our attention hung on the huge wall-covered grotto, the likes of which we haven’t seen outside of natural history museums. We won’t get into the ceramic bas-reliefs of Anatolian construction through the ages featuring Greek temples, Ottoman mosques and soaring office towers that adorn the other walls, or other such subtle details. Let the over-the-topness of the grotto – with its stuffed doe and gurgling brook – stand as a symbol for the glory of all things at Has Kral, including the food.

Looking at the menu, we spotted many similarities to one of our favorite restaurants, Akdeniz Hatay Sofrasi, which also serves the cuisine of Turkey’s Hatay area, near the southern border with Syria. Has Kral has the metrelik kebab, sheesh served by the meter, a sporting man’s choice. We also noticed the hallmark of Hatay whimsy, chicken or lamb baked in a salt dome and set ablaze at the table. Both are excellent at Akdeniz, but require advance order so we couldn’t sample Has Kral’s version.

We started our meal with a number of meze that we know and love from the Hatay kitchen – a zingy zahtar (fresh thyme) salad, fattush, or green salad riddled with crunchy fried pide chips, and lubnan ezmesi, which combined a salty soft cheese with roasted eggplant yogurt and dried red peppers. The starters, along with one of our favorite guilty pleasures between courses, icli kofte, were delicious.

Selecting from the list of kebabs is an overwhelming part of a meal at Has Kral. However poetic, items with names like “the dance of kebab” didn’t help us make a decision. We asked the waiter to translate the list into plain kebab language and settled on one of the specials, featuring an assortment of three kebabs. Here’s where Has Kral earned its crown.

Two of the three kebabs were shockingly good. The third, a çöp şiş, was very good by any normal measure but paled in comparison to its compatriots on the plate. One of those, made of fatty ground lamb shot through with bright green pistachios and shreds of red pepper, was crumbly and almost sweet. We found its partner, bursting with pine nuts, so moist and delicious that we thought we might be hallucinating. But that’s the Has Kral experience – trippy, down to the last detail.

There is a tempting desert menu, including candied unripe eggplants and walnuts, but by the end of the kebab course the atmosphere of Has Kral can get a little heavy. We suggest wandering the little streets around Has Kral, , in search of that perfectly plain kunefe shack. They are out there and we find kunefe, a traditional kebab house desert of shredded pastry and cheese soaked in syrup, is somehow sweeter when sitting on a rickety stool on the sidewalk, rather than when being stared down by a stuffed doe perched on a concrete grotto.

Address: Ragib Bey sok. 25/A, Aksaray
Telephone: (212) 534-9707
Web: http://www.haskralsofrasi.com/

(Editor’s Note: This week we are celebrating the white bean, that humble legume that reaches levels of incredible complexity and flavor when in the hands of Turkish cooks. Until visiting some of Istanbul’s shrines to the baked bean, we generally regarded the dish as something eaten out of a can beside railroad tracks. But Turkey takes this humble food (known as “kuru fasulye”) seriously; that means chefs in tall toques carefully ladling out golden beans in a rich red gravy onto monogrammed flatware, served by waiters wearing bowties and vests. Even in the least formal of Istanbul’s beaneries, the guy manning the pot has the air of a high priest knowing that his incantations alone conjure something unusually delicious out of a simple bean. This is no hobo fare. This week, to celebrate the bean, we are counting down our five favorite place in Istanbul to get “kuru fasulye.”)

Erzincanlı Ali Baba

According to historians, Tiryaki Sokak – Addicts Alley – got its name from the opium served up in its coffee houses in Ottoman times. Though that substance has been long banned, since 1924 Ali Baba has been ladling out something equally addictive from a great copper pot: Erzincan-style baked beans. Ingredients such as onion, tomato and chili pepper are more recognizable in the soupy base; the bean bigger than its Black Sea counterpart. Though we remain junkies of the Black Sea variety, the Erzincan preparation is a nice change of pace and there’s no better place to try a bowl than sitting on Ali Baba’s squat stools in the shadow of the minarets of the sublime Suleymaniye mosque.

Address: Prof. Sıddık Sami Onar Cad. No:11 Süleymaniye/İstanbul
Telephone: 212 – 513 62 19
Web: http://www.kurufasulyeci.com

(Editor’s Note: A recent article about a spat between Turkey and Greek Cyprus over who owns the rights to claim lahmacun as their own got us thinking about those minced-meat covered discs of dough and how, when done right, they really are something worth fighting over. So, prompted by the Turkish-Cypriot food fight, we’ve decided to officially declare this week “Lahmacun Week in Istanbul,” where we’ll be looking at five of our undisputed favorite spots in town to get a taste of how the contested savory delight should be made. Today’s post takes a look at Öz Kilis, a spot on a Fatih backstreet serving lahmacun (and kebab) as its made in southeastern Turkish city of Kilis.)

In Turkish popular lore, the denizens of Kilis, a town in southeastern Turkey right near the Syrian border, are known for several things: kebab and lahmacun 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 wonderful little spot on a quiet back street in the Fatih neighborhood run by two Kilis natives, and can report that the kebab and lahmacun making reputation is well deserved. (Click here for the rest of the review)

We love this itinerant liver man and his sandwiches for many reasons, including his wisdom. Of all the wandering food vendors, the cigerci has the niftiest gear. Lutfi usta, a wandering cigerci for more than thirty years, carries a large metal and glass lantern-shaped case which holds fried cubes of liver and grilled peppers in the bottom and whole tomatoes in an upper compartment. It is at once a cooler and an attractive, portable vitrine complete with foggy windows.

But a man in this economy cannot survive on looks alone. Lutfi’s “Albanian-style” liver sandwich is a delightful mid-day snack. We took a seat next to him and ordered a ceyrek, or quarter loaf. He pulled a pre-cut 5-inch fresh loaf of crusty white bread from wicker basket and started loading it up with a generous spooning from each compartment of the liver case – first the liver, then the peppers and tomatoes and finally a dash of salt – before handing it over.

The liver, bulked up with cubed potatoes and laced with onions, was warm and tasted less like the liver from some of our favorite grill spots but more like a hash. The liver’s batter barely gave way to a peppery oil bath it sat in, softening the loaf and the pepper and generally creating unity within the confines of the sandwich.

We handed over the three lira for the sandwich and thanked Lutfi usta, saying we’d see him again soon.

“Inshallah,” he said. Apparently, not even the will of an Istanbul street hustler can challenge that of fate.

Address: IMC Blok 1 (Near the bank machines), Ataturk Bulvari, Unkapani
Hours: 10-2pm (Inshallah)

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

(Editor’s Note: Although the new year is already upon us, we had so many memorable Istanbul dining experiences in 2010 that we wanted to take one last look at the past year’s culinary highlights. So, before we get to the work of further exploring Istanbul in 2011, here’s our top 10 bites of 2010.)

For us, the best bites are often the ones that are most reliable. Before we review a restaurant for this site, we try to return several times to make sure that that best bite wasn’t a fluke.

1. Pera Sisore was always a reliable favorite of ours. However, after a shakeup in management we’ve noticed a dip in quality and consistency. Luckily, half of the Sisore team, including the kitchen staff, recently opened a new place in Beyoglu called Hayvore. We are happy to report that all of the Sisore favorites are on offer at Hayvore. Perhaps one of our last bites in 2010, Hayvore is definitely among the best.

2. Just down the street from Hayvore is another standard in our playbook, Cukur Meyhanesi. Excellent meze and fried liver aside, this is always one of the first places we head to when the hamsi, or Black Sea anchovies, start swimming. A plate of these tiny fish — skewered and grilled — help us understand the hamsi mania that envelopes Istanbul every winter.

3. Another unforgettable fish was set before us just last week at the Arnavutkoy favorite Adem Baba. We aren’t sure how many times we’ve eaten sole at Adem Baba — rolled, skewered and grilled with wedges of tomato and peppers, fried or grilled whole — but every time feels like the first time. After a double portion, we considered abandoning Beyoglu for the restaurant’s Bosphorus-side neighborhood just to be able to eat here everyday.

4. Along with the reliable best bites, there were also transcending moments when we felt we’d stumbled on something Bigger than a great meal. Smearing creamy fava puree on toasted bread, munching fried fish and drinking beer from a can dangerously close to the lapping Bosphorus at Sunanin Yeri in Kandilli was certainly one of these moments.

5. The first time we walked into Fatih Karadeniz Pidecisi in Fatih there was such intense pide-worship going on we thought we’d stumbled into the temple of a secret cult. But we were heartily welcomed into the ritual taking place and it was very special. This too was one of those out-of-body best bites.

6. If a few years ago you told us we’d be craving liver for lunch everyday, we would have laughed in your face. But the truth is that we can’t stop thinking about the Arnavut Ciger – aka “Albanian liver,” tiny morsels of calf’s liver that are dusted with flour and red pepper flakes and then fried and served with thin slices of raw onion – at Beyoglu’s Sahin Lokantasi. We really would be eating this dish for lunch seven days a week if it were not for the fact that Sahin – perhaps in an act of kindness to the other restaurants in the area – only serves liver every other day.

7. The Besiktas-based bistro-like Meyhane Sidika was one of our most satisfying finds of the year, with a great out-of-the-way location and lovingly prepared food. One of the restaurant’s meze specialties is a chunky, light green spread that turned out to be an utterly delicious mash made out of feta cheese and chopped pistachios. Nothing fancy – just good, honest food that was completely memorable.

8. In years past, the exceedingly short growing season of loquats always seemed to pass us by, which meant we usually missed our chance to have “Yeni Dunya Kebab” – a springtime specialty made by wrapping pitted loquats around minced meat and then grilling them on a skewer (in the picture above) until the fruit turns tangy and jam-like, serving as a perfect counterpoint to the fatty meat. This year we made a point of catching this unique and delicious kebab’s limited-run at Samatya’s Develi kebab house and we’re already counting the days until the first loquat appears this spring.

9. We’re all for culinary innovation, but there are some things that need little improvement. Take, for example, grilled ribs – a dish that has changed little since our earliest ancestors started putting meat to fire. Over at Taksim’s Zubeyir Ocakbasi, the kaburga – lamb ribs – are the kind of thing that awaken our inner caveman, an unbelievably satisfying mix of meat, fat, smoke and bone that always finds us ordering a second round.

10. There are several good spots to try durum – kebab wrapped in flatbread – around town, but this year we finally had a chance to try Aynen Durum, a superb joint just outside the Grand Bazaar that we had been eyeing for a long time. While the durum there was great, what we truly loved about this microscopic place was the vibe  and the crowd of hungry bazaar locals chowing down with a kind of reckless abandon rarely seen in other places around town.

(Editor’s Note: As 2010 heads to an end, we are looking back at our “Best Bites” of the year and are asking our readers to do the same and share their best Istanbul eating moments with us. This submission (after the jump) comes from Budapest residents Bob Cohen and Fumie Suzuki

I submit this for Fumie and my own best eating experience in Istanbul: Iftar feast in the Fatih Siirt market. Not only because of the food — and you know I am a big fan of the roast lamb and lavash Ocakbasi places that ring the market, and even sneak off to there to eat alone since the fare tends to be a bit heavy for Fumie’s Japanese constitution. But we wanted to see how devout Muslims break their fast — Fatih style, not Beyoglu style — and so off to conservative Fatih we went. We crossed the park near Aqueduct where the free Iftar was being laid out, and while taking pictures, we were also invited to partake. But we had our heart on the Siirt Market. It was hard to choose from amongst the restaurants — all had tables laid outside ready with cig kebab, salad, and as diners would take a seat, waiters brought out lots of bottled cold water, bowls of ayran, and finally, soup. As the moment when the minaret signaled the end of the day, people fiddled with their water bottles, tinkered with their place settings, and chatted. And when the magic moment came there wasn’t a cheer or any audable rustle, just people determinedly opening water and drinking deep, lighting long awaited cigarettes, and slurping soup. Waiters shot into action around the square, loading tables with huge platters brimming with bulgar, lahmajun, kebabs, and of course, the house lamb. Afterwards we sat in a huge tent drinking tea listening to ashiks take turns singing and playing on saz. Someone a our table explained about the difficulty of fasting in last summer’s unrelenting heat “It is difficult. But we are all people. This is something we can do.” A better introduction to what Ramazan represents could not be imagined.

(Editor’s Note: As 2010 heads to an end, we are looking back at our “Best Bites” of the year and are asking our readers to do the same and share their best Istanbul eating moments with us. This submission (after the jump) comes from Barcelona resident Hollis Duncan, who had a few short but sweet culinary highlights to share from a recent visit to Istanbul).

BURÇ KEBAP – Located in the Grand Bazaar on a side street that most tourists (fortunately) would give up on before successfully finding is Burç Kebap; their house specialty dolma which is stuffed peppers and eggplant may have been the single most memorable dish of my trip to Istanbul.

KARDESLER CAFE – A truly perfect dining moment: a delightful cup of Turkish tea (cay) arrived on a beautiful, sunny day in the lovely Beyoglu (Cihangir) neighborhood. In my mind I still sit on this corner perch and order cay when the mood hits.