(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.)

Without looking up from the sports page he answered, “Well, I’m fifty-six years old, so I guess I’ve been working here for fifty-six years.” Mustafa has always been here. End of discussion.

Luckily, there are sweeter things to behold in the historic Balat neighborhood’s Merkez Sekercisi than Mustafa bey. The house-made lokum dusted in sugar, the ekmek kadayif and the wide tray of baklava in the front window had us captivated. While Mustafa weighed out a generous slab of the ekmek kadayif, we sat at the one and only table and enjoyed the pleasant time warp provided by the shop’s vintage scene – the mint green hue of the room (a jarring reminder of previous generation’s tastes), Formica counters on which a large enameled scale sat (perhaps it was Mustafa, in his own mischievous youth, who slapped a Besiktas soccer sticker on the grand old Wartburg candy scale?), and a jalopy of a cooler in the corner that chugged and hummed.

If the décor was leftover from Mustafa’s grandfather’s days behind the counter, the ekmek kadayif was absolutely of the moment. Two slices of syrup-soaked bubbly shortcakes sandwiching a schmear of bright white kaymak – this can be a gooey mess within hours of preparation. The one at Merkez was pleasantly saturated but firm, the kaymak a comparatively crisp note between the saccharine decks of ekmek kadayif.

We skipped the baklava and summoned Mustafa to the lokum counter. Double pistachio is the Ferrari of Turkish Delight – flashy and expensive, it’s designed more to impress others – and the one at Merkez shining green with nuts was certainly tempting. But instead, we asked Mustafa what flavor his grandfather favored. He cracked a smile and said, “He loved gullu” – rose flavored – “lokum.”

We left Merkez Sekercisi with a small bag of the shop’s gullu lokum, eating it as we followed the narrow streets through the Balat market. Perfumed gum drops – in most cases, an offering we’d politely decline. But standing outside of Merkez and thinking about Mustafa’s grandfather and the Ottoman period he lived in opened up new dimensions in our sweet tooth. Later, as we walked past supermarkets and corner stores stuffed with Gofret bars, Cadbury’s and Ulker’s latest creations, we started to understand Mustafa’s gloom. He’s probably the last guy on the block that still remembers the heyday of gullu lokum.

Address: Leblebiciler Sok. 33, Balat
Telephone: 212 523 9334

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

(Editor’s Note: This post is part of our occasional “Since You Asked…” advice column. We welcome our readers’ questions, so feel free to send any you might have to istanbuleats@gmail.com)

Hi!
I’ll have an 8-hour layover in Istanbul in a couple of weeks. I was wondering if you have any suggestions for places to go for a good Turkish breakfast and lunch. I love to eat at small, local places serving authentic food. Sorry! I forgot to add that I prefer restaurants near the Yesilkoy area as I have to board an international flight (which I cannot afford to miss).
Frequent Eater, Buffalo, NY

Dear FE,
First off, with 8 hours you can safely venture into nearly any part of the city and safely make it back to the airport on time. But to err on the safe side, let’s limit your grazing territory to the southernmost neighborhoods of the Old City, which are the ones nearest to the airport.

First, Kumkapi:
We suggest taking a taxi straight to the Kumkapi neighborhood to save time. The fare shouldn’t cost more than 15 TL and takes about 15 minutes via the coastal road. After passing under the viaduct you will enter a street filled with restaurants. Continue straight toward the central fountain and make a left on Ordekli Bakkal Sokak. About 100 meters down this street on the left you will find Boris’in Yeri.

This place has been keeping Kumkapi’s restaurants and residents stocked with bal/kaymak, a rich buffalo milk cream served under a blanket of honey, for almost a century. And from the looks of the place, little has changed since Boris first opened shop. Old cracked tile floors, marble tables worn from use and a pair of stainless steel coolers the size of Buicks are about the only decor you’ll find here. But a plate of kaymak, alongside fried eggs or a Turkish style scramble with tomatoes and peppers, is the perfect way to start your eight-hour eating spree.

From Boris’in Yeri, we suggest a stroll through the residential streets of the neighborhood, once a quiet Greek and Armenian district, where grand churches set in peaceful courtyards seem to be tucked around every corner. The narrow streets lined with crumbling late-Ottoman homes, now inhabited by a vibrant community of Anatolians, migrants from the former Soviet Union and North Africans, offer an interesting glimpse into contemporary urban life within the City walls.

Loop back to the fountain now and follow the street lined with fish restaurants out to the sea. Cross the coastal road, carefully, and check out the day’s fresh catch at the fish market. This is an atmospheric place to familiarize yourself with the bounty of Istanbul’s local waters. There are some simple fish sandwich stands tucked among the fishmongers, but we suggest saving yourself for lunch in Samatya.

Keeping the shore on your left you will now set off for Samatya. The walk could take 30-45 minutes depending on your speed, so you might want to fortify yourself with a quick simit or acma by the ferry dock at Yenikapi.

You will walk along the seaside, passing remnants of the old city walls, small fishing boats bobbing in the sea and wide recreational green spaces. Continue on until you see road signs for Samatya.  Here you will cross the coastal road once again and follow the road into the center of Samatya.

Samatya, also once a largely Greek and Armenian neighborhood, has several lovely small streets to explore all in the general vicinity of the fish market.

When you arrive at the nabe’s small fish market, you’ll see a little fish shack called Kucuk Ev. This is our favorite spot in Samatya and provides a front row seat to the hustle and bustle of the fish market. At Kucuk Ev, everything is fresh, local, inexpensive and served quickly. For a full review of Kucuk Ev click here.

If you are having a kebab craving, just across from Kucuk Ev is a branch of the venerable kebab chain, Develi. We generally keep away from chains but this one serves interesting seasonal kebabs, a fine lahmacun and the Southeastern specialty dessert, kunefe.

After lunch you will probably need to catch a cab to the airport. The waiters at Develi can call one, as it can be difficult to flag one on the street in Samatya. When you get to the airport, have a walk through the food court and thank yourself for not wasting your Istanbul meals there.

Boris’in Yeri
Address: Ordekli Bakkal Sok. 17, Kumkapi
Telephone: (212) 517 -2256

Kucuk Ev
Address: Kuleli Cad. 46, Samatya, Istanbul
Telephone: (212) 588-5101

(photo by Mr. Mystery, via Wikimedia Commons

Van, of course, is the home and birthplace of the monstrous morning repast known as, well, the “Van Breakfast.” It’s a city that runs on the meal, with numerous “breakfast salons” (as they are called in Turkish) serving up breakfast and nothing but all day long. Like Vegas, Van even has its own “strip,” a pedestrian-only alley filled with restaurants that’s known as “Breakfast Makers Street” (Kahvalticilar Sokak, in Turkish)

As we’ve written here before, this boffo breakfast has been working its way west, with several Van breakfast places opening up in Istanbul in the last few years. But, as much as we love going out for a Van breakfast in Istanbul, we were happy that after an absence of several years, we recently had a chance to go back to Van and get our breakfast right at the source.

Like in Vegas, a visitor to Van is forced to choose between the glamour of one of the big, glitzy places on the “strip,” or to take their chances at a smaller, out-of-the-way spot where they might have an easier time getting a place at the table and perhaps more personal attention from the dealer, in this case the “usta” at the front who is in charge of putting together the numerous small plates that make up the Van breakfast.

In the name of thoroughness, we decided to split the pot and try two different breakfast spots. Following the recommendation of the deskman at our hotel, we first headed over to Kahvalticilar Sokak to try the offerings at Sütçü Fevzi, one of the strip’s veteran strongholds. We sat down at one of the outdoor tables and no quicker than you can say “deal ‘em,” our table was covered with food – a plate with cucumber and impossibly red tomatoes sprinkled with red pepper flakes, another plate holding some of the freshest-tasting butter we’ve ever had, very tasty cacik (chopped cucumber and parsley mixed with strained yogurt), and of course, a block of the superb local cheese, a white cheese mixed with brined wild herbs. Next to these plates was another, this one holding a generous amount of glorious kaymak covered in Van’s excellent local honey and a chopped walnuts. We knew we weren’t in Istanbul when a young fellow wearing rubber boots showed up carrying a steaming pile of freshly baked flatbreads, some of which soon made it to our table.

Already stuffed, we headed away from the breakfast strip and towards the heart of town to try the offerings at Imsak Kahvalti Salonu, an unassuming hole-in-the-wall breakfast spot we ate in a few years. Run by the self-effacing Omer (pictured above), Imsak does a brisk trade serving hungry locals, many of whom swing by to get a breakfast package to go.

We sat down in the small fluorescent-lit dining room, its walls painted a disturbing shade of neon lime, and ordered a small breakfast (if such a thing even exists in Van). Where Sütçü Fevzi’s dairy products had a kind of refined polish to them, Imsak’s seemed tuned to a tangier frequency, the cacik, butter and brined herb cheese having a more pronounced – in a pleasant way – flavor to them. Our beloved kaymak, meanwhile, came covered in a thick layer of lovely honey and a generous amount of chopped walnuts and, as a bonus, chopped pistachios. It was really more like dessert than breakfast and, as we saw it, we had just hit the jackpot.

Sütçü Fevzi
Address: Kahvalticilar Sok. No: 9, Van
Telephone: 0432-216-6618
Web: www.sutcufevzi.com

Imsak Kahvalti Salonu
Mareşal Fevzi Çakmak Cad. Bayram Oteli Alti, Van
Telephone: 0432-216-0921
Web: www.imsakkahvalt

(photo by Yigal Schleifer)

“On Sundays, we have a staff of twenty-five. People drive in from Istanbul just for breakfast,” said the owner of Mavi Boncuk, a breakfast garden-cum-guesthouse located in the idyllic village of Cumalikizik near Bursa. The focal point of Mavi Boncuk may be the quaint little stone and timber village houses where guests can stay, but all of the action takes place in the sprawling multi-tiered garden where breakfast is served. On one recent Saturday night, after the staff had all left, we fell into a deep sleep to the soft splat of mulberries falling from the trees in the garden and the anticipation of what would be a major breakfast event.

The next morning, before breakfast, a quick stroll around the narrow stone-paved alleys of the village offered a sneak preview of what our breakfast held in store. Around one corner, a spry old woman in Anatolian camouflage – baggy pants, shirt, headscarf of three different floral prints – beckoned us into the courtyard of her home to show us what she was up to. A wide pan of blackberry au jus was bubbling over a fire of twigs. “I gather the blackberries and raspberries with my husband,” she jerked a thumb in her husband’s direction without looking at him, “I make the jams, jar it and sell it. My daughter-in-law lives right upstairs but she does nothing!”

Her husband took us out to the garden to sample ripe blackberries and divine raspberries. As we picked and ate at will, he fielded a telephone call about the availability of river trout. Yes, he could source them, no problem. These villagers are clearly in the business of food.

Just down the way, under a jutting bay window overhang painted pastel blue, a fat lady sat in front of a table filled with bags of tarhana, dehydrated soup powder of wheat and yogurt, brown eggs, jars of deeply hued chestnut flower honey and bags of erişte, a sort of Anatolian noodle. Following a stream that ran right down the middle of the stony path, we found another old lady with jars of bright red tomato and pepper paste. “It’s spicy, son,” she said as we walked by, “Spicy.” Around another corner we found a young lady watching over a table of long spirally loaves looking like a giant croissant, alongside hearty, dark wheels of bread dusted in flour.

Then the narrow street opened all at once onto a wide plaza where much of the same foodstuff was for sale in great abundance. At the center of the plaza sat a beautiful big red tractor flanked by two boisterous old farmers selling blackberries and raspberries at sinfully low prices. It seemed everyone in this quaint little village was selling something delicious and they all looked happy and well fed. Wandering around the village, tasting some of this and buying a jar of that, we felt like a certain character in the children’s book Charlotte’s Web delighting in a veritable smorgasbord.

By the time we returned to the Mavi Boncuk – our appetite peaked by the morning stroll – breakfast was slipping into high gear. As promised, there were dozens of ladies in colorful headscarves darting around – one with toasted bread, another concerned only with the kaymak, two that worked the gozleme station. Tea, though, was the business of a group of nimble young men in uniform, served in big brass samovars requiring yet another staffer,  charged with doling out hot coals from a barbeque pit.

We found a table under a tree near two dogs tethered to a fence post. As they bounced around at the end of their chains, another dog slinked around the breakfast area freely but the waiter told us not to worry, “He’s blind.” And then breakfast was served.

The final count was two plates of honey, a fat roll of kaymak, three different jams, three local cheeses (“local,” meaning within walking distance), two breads, two different bowls of olives, yogurt, cucumbers and tomato wedges, a beautiful char-freckled gozleme stuffed with cheese and potatoes and, of course, a hulking, piping hot samovar filled with tea.

In previous travels in Turkey, we’ve happened into idyllic farming villages like this one only to find the breakfast table set with the same packaged foods we find in the supermarkets of Istanbul. In our experience, an entirely farm-to-table meal can be surprisingly hard to find. However, our breakfast in Cumalikizik calls for reconsideration. Whether the folks in Cumalikizik got the slowfood memo or they are just upholding an entirely logical rural supply chain, we will never know. We will, however, be looking out for more culinary destinations like this one.

Now, if we close our eyes and try to conjure the quintessential Bursa flavor, spinning meat-sicles trimmed by men in white jackets no longer come to mind. It’s the warm, sweet, runny scoop of blackberry jam served up by rough, stained fingers in a smoky courtyard that remains the strongest impression – one that will surely lure us back to Cumalikizik every season.

Address: Saldede Sok, Cumalikizik Koyu, Bursa
Telephone: 224-373-0955
Web: http://www.cumalikizik-maviboncuk.com/

Note: Cumalikizik is roughly half an hour by car from the center of Bursa. Reservations for Sunday brunch are strongly recommended. One night at Mavi Boncuk including breakfast for one person, 80 TL

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

This week’s winning shot, by Bora Ann Kim of the US, is of the lovable Pando, owner of perhaps the best kaymak shop in Istanbul. Congratulations Bora!

We were particularly intrigued by one of the places featured in the show, Kale Cafe, a cozy-looking spot in the Bosphorus-side Rumeli Hisari neighborhood, that specializes in serving up a bountiful Turkish breakfast. The images of kaymak – the Turkish clotted cream that is the crack cocaine of dairy products – being scooped up with pieces of steaming fresh lavash left us drooling in front of our TV set. A trip up the Bosphorus was certainly in order.

So, on a recent morning, we got over our fear of traffic jams along the narrow Bosphorus coastal road and of being drowned in a sea of Ugg boot wearers and made our way up to the swankier side of town. We knew we made the right decision as soon as we arrived in Rumeli Hisari and saw the sun reflecting off the waters of the Bosphorus, as an endless procession of ships and smaller boats sailed by.

Outside of Kale, located in a house-like building right on the coastal road overlooking the Bosphorus, we found a line of people waiting for the next available table (the popularity of the cafe, which started as a small bakery in 1982, has forced it to expand into the restaurant next door, while an annex is being opened some 200 meters away). Once we sat down, we ordered the upgraded serpme kahvalti (“breakfast spread”), which turned out to be a table-breaking bounty: along with the standard items – olives, tomato, cucumber, etc. – there was an assortment of cheeses, including fried helumi (a pleasantly rubbery and salty cheese from Cyprus), several types of börek and gozleme, fried eggs with sausage, and, of course, the very tasty kaymak, topped with honey.

Along with the food, one of the joys of Kale is the service, with a team of roving waiters who always seems to show up just at the right time with a fresh glass of tea. After finishing our leisurely breakfast, we repaired to one of the Bosphorus-side benches across the street, where one of the waiters graciously brought us a Turkish coffee.

Kale’s menu also features other items, including manti and the usual grill dishes like kofte and kebab. But it’s that breakfast, combined with the view of the Bosphorus, that just might get us out of that Beyoglu rut.

Address: Yahya Kemal Caddesi No: 16, Rumelihisari
Telephone: 212-265-0097
Web: www.kalecafe.com

(photo by Jonathan Lewis)

Day One: Turkey’s Regional Flavors in Beyoglu

Breakfast: Van Kahvalti Evi in Cihangir
In the city of Van, not far from Turkey’s border with Iran, breakfast has been turned into serious business: the town is filled with dozens of Kahvaltı Salonu’s – breakfast salons – that serve a dizzying assortment of farm fresh breakfast items day and night.

In recent years this superb breakfast has been working its way westward, with several Van-style spots now open in Istanbul. Our favorite is Van Kahavaltı Evi (Van Breakfast House) in Beyoglu’s Cihangir neighborhood. The restaurant hasquickly become one of the area’s most popular, and it’s easy to see why. The people running the friendly place serve a mean breakfast, bringing in most of their ingredients, some of them organic, from back east.

The Van breakfast takes the traditional Turkish breakfast of cheese, tomato, cucumber and some bread and turns it up several notches. At Van Kahvalti Evi, along with the standards, your breakfast plate comes with an assortment of local Van cheeses (including a very tasty one that contains brined wild herbs), kaymak (clotted cream), tangy cacik (thick yogurt spread) and murtuğa, a heavy wheat flour porridge that looks almost like scrambled eggs. Butter, jams, olives and some of Van’s famous honey round all this out – along with endless glasses of strong tea.
Address: Defterdar Yokuşu No: 52.A, Cihangir
Telephone: 212-293-6437

Lunch: Hayvore
At first glance, with its steam table covered with pots of ready-made food, Hayvore may look like any one of those quickie lunch spots found throughout Turkey. But there’s a difference – someone here is cooking up some serious Black Sea magic in the kitchen.

The Black Sea area is Turkey’s culinary misfit – not really about kebabs or meze. It’s simple, filling, down-home food and Hayvore is a great spot to get acquainted with it.

This time of year, the restaurant – found on a side street off busy Istiklal boulevard – serves a very tasty version of hamsi (fresh anchovy) pilaf, the holy grail of Black Sea cooking. A kind of savory fish cake, the pilaf has small hamsi filets wrapped around a thick bed of rice infused with herbs, currants and pine nuts.

Everything else we’ve tried at Hayvore has been a winner. A rib sticking stew made with kale, beans and hominy was earthy and smoky. Hayvore also serves up a fine version of another Black Sea staple – creamy white beans (kuru fasulye) cooked up in a rich, buttery red sauce.

On any given day, Hayvore has more than a dozen items bubbling away on the steam table, some typical Black Sea dishes, some not. It’s worth trying a few – it’s the easiest way to visit the Black Sea without leaving Istanbul.
Address: Turnacibasi Sokak 4, Beyoglu
Telephone: 212-245-7501

Tea Time: Güllüoğlu
Baklava, the flaky, phyllo-dough based pastry, has long ago stopped being a Middle Eastern regional specialty. In America, for example, it is now a staple of dessertmenus at diners and falafel stands across the country. But these places miss the point: baklava is actually not a dessert, but rather an event in itself.

In Istanbul, Karaköy Güllüoğlu is one of our favorite places for an authentic baklava experience. Located a stone’s throw from the Bosphorus, this baklava emporium has been catering to Istanbul sweet tooths since 1949, serving than a dozen different kinds of phyllo-based sweets, none of them resembling the cardboard-like, past-its-prime version of baklava that is often dished out outside the Middle East. Along with the excellent classic baklava, we are also fans of a specialty called sutlu Nuriye, made of flaky layers of pastry drenched in a sweet, milky sauce. After ordering your baklava, sit down at a table outside and catch the Bosphorus breeze.
Address: Katli Otopark Alti (main store) or 171 Mumhane Cad. (factory store), Karaköy
Phone: 212-293-0910 (main store) or 212-243-1376 (factory store)
Web: www.karakoygulluoglubaklava.com

Dinner: Antiochia
We recently stumbled upon Antiochia – a small restaurant on a quiet Beyoglu backstreet that exudes cool without sacrificing flavor.

From its funky logo to the hipster waiters, Antiochia clearly has a different ambition (and clientele) than most restaurants serving the Middle Eastern-influenced foodfrom Turkey’s southern Hatay region, an area wedged between Syria and the Mediterranean Sea.

Nar eksili cevizli kozbiber, a divine relish of red and green peppers in a pomegranate dressing, was topped with crushed walnuts, adding a crunchy texture to this sweet and sour cold starter. Tasting the homemade yogurt with mint proved just how little we knew about what yogurt can be — pleasantly sour and almost as thick as butter. Muammara, a thick spread of walnuts, red pepper and spices is a Hatay signature and a fine choice. Our favorite, though, was the kekik salatasi, an intense meze of green olives, fresh thyme and olive oil.

Antiochia’s main courses are simple, recognizable dishes, yet set to a higher frequency. Şiş et is a plate of marinated cubes of beef skewered and grilled over a charcoal fire. On any given evening in Beyoglu, there have got to be thousands of skewers of şiş et coming off the grill, but none are quite as tender and succulent as the one at Antiochia. The minced meat wrap, an Istanbul street food favorite, with onions and tomatoes, was among the best we’ve had in the city.
Address: Minare Sokak, Asmalimesict
Phone: 212-292-1100
Web: www.antiochiaconcept.com

Day Two: Old and New Istanbul on the Bosphorus

Breakfast: Besiktas Kaymakci (AKA Kaymakci Pando)
In our imagination, kaymak – the delicious Turkish version of clotted cream – is the only food served in heaven, where angels in white robes dish out plate after plate of the cloudlike stuff to the dearly departed, who no longer have to worry about cholesterol counts and visits to the cardiologist.

Perhaps we’re getting carried away, but kaymak can do that to you. For our money, the classic Turkish combo of kaymak served with honey and crusty white bread is one of the finest breakfasts this side of paradise. And one of our favorite places to eat this breakfast is Besiktas Kaymakci.

This tiny shop/eatery has been in business since 1895, and it certainly shows its age. The marble counter is cracked and the paint on the walls peeling. But the kaymak, served up by the 84-year-old Pando, a Turk of Bulgarian origin and a living institution in Istanbul’s untouristed Besiktas bazaar, is out of this world. Prices here also seem unchanged since 1895: a plate of kaymak and honey, served with fresh bread and a glass of steaming hot milk, will set you back 4 lira.
Address: Koyici Meydanı Sokak, Besiktas
Telephone: 212-258-2616

Lunch: Ismet Baba
Most fish restaurants are mere caricatures of places like Ismet Baba, where traditions have been kept sacred for more than fifty years. This may not be the best restaurant in the city, but it’s got something most of the others have lost, keeping rhythm to an old school style of Istanbul charm and character.

At Ismet Baba, located in Kuzguncuk, a charming Bosphorus neighborhood on the Asian side, we like to lean back, hunker down into a long raki-laced lunch and really enjoy this special place and its classic mezes. Pilaki, beans in olive oil, and the cold octopus salad are unusually good. We also like the haydari, a thick, tangy spread of strained yogurt and dill and the fried eggplant with a garlicky yogurt drizzle. The catch of the day is posted on a small black board in the dining room, and we found the grilled bream, cupra, or a plate of blue fish, cinekop, perfectly prepared and just the right amount.
Address: Carsi Caddesi #1A, Kuzguncuk
Telephone: 216-553-1232

Dinner: Abracadabra
This funky informal restaurant, housed in an imposing Ottoman-era mansion located smack dab on the Bosporus in the swank Arnavutkoy neighborhood, serves some of Istanbul’s most creative riffs on traditional Turkish cuisine.

The four floors of the building each have a very different vibe, from bar-like to intimate, although we suggest a table in the dine-in kitchen, up close and personal with Abracadabra’s spunky owner-chef Dilara Erbay, a pioneer of Turkish fusion cuisine.

Through flaming woks, kitchen hustle and shouts, something smelling at once Thai, Turkish and Lebanese rushes past you for Dilara’s final touch. There’s a lot going on in this kitchen that you won’t want to miss. And when it’s time to order, we usually put ourselves at the tender mercy of Dilara, letting her guide us through the menu.

Dilara’s navigation of the appetizer menu includes her latest inspired creations, prepared with what’s fresh in the markets. Like a jazzman interpreting on an old standard, Dilara hints at classic Turkish cuisine sometimes in little more than name, for example tweaking the classic börek into a bouquet of matchstick skinny, 6-inch batons served upright in a shot glass of sweet and spicy sauce, both beautiful and fun to eat.
Address: 50/1 Arnavutkoy Cad. Arnavutkoy
Phone: (212) 358-6087
www.abracadabra-ist.com

The apple-like quince is one of those complicated, mysterious fruits that take on a new life when cooked. Raw, quinces are often astringent and inedible. Cooked (granted, with a generous amount of sugar), the fruit assumes a different personality, with a newfound depth of flavor and a seductive perfume. In the case of ayva tatlisi, large quinces are halved, stewed and then baked until they turn meltingly soft and are coated in a thick and sticky reddish glaze (the color is the result of a chemical reaction that is yet another of the fruit’s mysteries). Once cool, the glazed quince is served with a dollop kaymak, the heavenly Turkish version of clotted cream.

The addition of the kaymak, whose buttery richness cuts through – yet deliciously compliments – the sweetness of the glazed fruit, takes the dessert to almost sinfully good levels. The guilt eating it evokes is only tempered by the realization that you’re actually eating a fruit – albeit one glazed in thick, sugary syrup and topped with extremely rich cream. We like to think of it as a highly refined version of the glazed jelly-filled donut.

Like donuts, ayva tatlisi can become addictive, and we find the Balik Pazar’s Sakarya Tatlicisi, in business for more than 50 years, a perfect spot to get our fix. This time of the year, the small shop’s display case always holds a tray of the glistening quinces, next to its usual assortment of (very good) baklava and other traditional pastries and sweets. Many places around town like to spike their quince dessert with food coloring, turning it radioactive red. At Sakarya, the fruit is left to its own devices, achieving an ethereal color that hovers somewhere between rosy pink, ruby red and burnt orange.

Although most people breeze into the shop, getting their dessert to go, we prefer to sit down at one of Sakarya’s two tables, order a tea with our quince and take in the atmosphere of the fish market. We would go there more often, but sadly (or, come to think of it, fortunately), quinces – unlike donuts – are only available a few months of the year.

Address: Dudu Odaları Sok. No: 3, Balik Pazar, Beyoglu
Telephone: 212-249-2469

(Photo by Yigal Schleifer)

We usually steer clear of the touristy old city district of Kumkapi, where you are more likely to be accosted by an aggressive maitre d’ trying to corral you into his overpriced fish restaurant than to find something simple, tasty and reasonably priced to eat. Sadly, in order to beat the competition next door, most of Kumkapi’s famed fish restaurants seem to have invested more in aggressive customer corralling tactics than in kitchen talent. However, tucked into the neighborhood’s back streets, we’ve found a few hidden dining gems that locals in the know frequent.
When in the area, we skip Kumkapi’s fish restaurant strip and make a beeline for Doyuran Lokantasi, a serious little eating sanctuary on a nearby side street. The men at the next table might be wearing spackle-crusted work shirts and have measuring tapes on their belts, but they know their food. In most Istanbul neighborhoods, the working class sets the culinary bar, and they set it high. They want it fast, fresh, cheap and as close as possible to their mothers’ recipes. Offering up four or five daily lunch specials, including homemade Turkish dumplings (manti), chickpeas over rice, and an assortment of traditional stews, Doyuran’s husband and wife team answer the working man’s call with ease, the service both professional and homey.

“Bismillah,” said owner/operator Musa Ergenc, calling on the name of God as he cut the first piece of a steaming musaka from a large pan on a recent visit. And heavenly it was upon arrival at the table – the eggplant richly saturated but not too oily. Unlike the Greek version, which is usually topped with a creamy béchamel sauce, the top layer of Doyuran’s musaka consists of a refreshing blast of chopped tomatoes. In order to try as many of the day’s specials we ask for small portions, or “az.”

Ispanak yemeği, a steam table standard of stewed spinach and rice more associated with filling the belly than exciting the senses, here provoked a double take. This didn’t look or taste anything like the heavy, overcooked green mush we’ve become accustomed to elsewhere. This one had a made to order feel, with each flavor presenting itself separately, from the fresh spinach to the light tomato-sauce base. A dollop of yogurt on the side, if requested, thickens the last few bites into something pleasantly spoonable and leaves the dish with a cool finish.

Though Doyuran’s dessert puddings are perfectly passable, around the corner something truly phenomenal awaits to satisfy the sweet tooth. Boris’in Yeri has been keeping Kumkapi’s restaurants and residents stocked with bal/kaymak, a rich buffalo milk cream served under a blanket of honey, for almost a century. And from the looks of the place, little has changed since Boris first opened shop. Old cracked tile floors, marble tables worn from use and a pair of stainless steel coolers the size of Buicks are about the only decor you’ll find here. Like at Doyuran’s, the focus here is on the food, not on trawling for customers. With food this good, they come on their own.

Doyuran Lokantasi
Address: Ordekli Bakkal Sok. 10, Kumkapi
Telephone: 212-458-2637
(lunch only)

Boris’in Yeri
Address: Ordekli Bakkal Sok. 17, Kumkapi
Telephone: 212-517 -2256