Tuesday

Kosinitza: Trattoria ala Turca

(Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by Kathryn Tomasetti and Tristan Rutherford, freelance travel journalists for The Guardian, The Independent and Time Out, among others. Their website can be found here.)

Kosinitza is located in the charming Bosphorus-side village of Kuzguncuk, a short bus ride north of Üsküdar. It’s a time-forgotten place where wooden homes are interspersed with bakeries, crowded teahouses and shops piled with fresh vegetables. Down the road from the restaurant is an Armenian church, which, very uniquely, shares a courtyard with the next-door mosque; there are also two synagogues and a Greek Orthodox church nearby.

Culturally satiated? I was when I duck inside with my husband Tristan: lunch at Kosinitza is his birthday treat. Newspaper clippings and artworks share space on the restaurant’s saffron walls, while the heavy cutlery on each table could herald from an aristocratic granny’s kitchen. We are lucky enough to be the only patrons, as I’d reserved the whole restaurant for Tristan’s birthday (or so I may have claimed), and received owner-cum-waiter-cum-sommelier Ibrahim’s undivided attention. Continue…