(Editor’s Note: This guest post was written by “Meliz,” an intrepid explorer of Istanbul’s culinary backstreets and a frequent contributor to these pages who would like to keep her anonymity.)

It all started with Laz boregi.

It was not just any Laz boregi that showed up at the dinner party that evening, but perfect Laz Boregi—layers of yufka (phyllo) buttery and moist, dusted with confectioner’s sugar, in a symbiotic balance with the custard, which was neither too sweet, nor too eggy; neither too runny, nor too stiff. Goldilocks would be proud. Juuuust right. And, it turns out, this stuff is addictive.

So that got me on the ferry and up the hill to Moda Caddesi in Kadikoy, on a pilgrimage to the source. And that is where I really got myself into trouble.

Bizim Ev is a storefront on one of the arcaded stretches of Moda Caddesi, tucked in between discount stores, karate studios, the best butcher in town, and five million coiffeurs. Glowing and cozy, the place welcomes you with an immediate barrage of choices. And therein lies the problem. How to choose just one thing? Turns out, I am incapable of this.

So. In addition to the Laz boregi mentioned already, they do an amazing savory borek stuffed with roasted eggplant (kozlenmis patlican muska boregi), and a daily selection of other savory boreks. Again, perfect yufka, perfect fillings, perfect borek. My greatest weakness at Bizim Ev, though, is an item best described as When Veggie Quiche Met Ev Pogaca. A baked batter that falls somewhere on the eggier side of biscuit holds together a cornucopia of vegetables (usually potato, red pepper, onion, zucchini) laced generously with fresh dill. Irresistible.  And there is still so much more to choose from: cookies, cakes (the sour cherry cake, ooooh the sour cherry cake), baklava…and then there are the zeytinyagli dishes. Bizim Ev manages to rock the baked goods AND to roll out an impressive variety of cold appetizer classics, all made daily from the best ingredients, and all delicious enough to impress even the most stubborn zeytinyagli snob.

Although Bizim Ev is primarily a take-away type of operation, they do have a few tables, inside and out. If I am in a social and sharing mood, I will sometimes pick up some goodies to bring with me when meeting up with friends at the nearby (and lovely) Moda Tea Gardens – those guys never raise a fuss over BYO snacks.

I do not joke when I say that I am incapable of picking just one thing, but I suspect I am not the only one, as owners Nezahat Hanim and Ali Bey never bat an eye when I look shifty, clutch at my pearls, and let out the clarion call of a closeted addict: ‘oh, and maybe just a few of those, too…’ So go ahead, do not be shy, try it all. Everything at Bizim Ev is outstanding. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Address: Moda Caddesi #9/A, Moda 
Telephone: +90-216-336-1681

Dilara then surfaced for a short tenure in the kitchen of Cezayir, a grand space just around the corner from her old place on French Street. Her touch was apparent for a while but it quickly faded with her departure. Then at Abracadabra, the behemoth on the Bosphorus – complete with a merchandise line – that was her next venture, we saw bright, encouraging moments – usually when Dilara was in the kitchen for the night – eclipsed by stormy mismanagement. The entrée side of the menu featured a troubled marriage of Turkish and Thai, but the starters were all classic Dilara material. The fragrance of her cinnamon-laced Armenian rice, in essence stuffed mussels without the shell, stays with us to this day. But the restaurant never seemed fully settled. It’s closing, though certainly a low moment, must have been of some relief to Dilara’s fans and perhaps even to the chef herself.

Most recently, we started getting Facebook messages in that familiar Dilara-speak (eg. “…kurufasuliye, hot n sexy”) sent from a place called Datli Maya, the itinerant chef’s latest project, housed in an old Cihangir simit bakery that she recently purchased. Decorated in a rustic utilitarian style, without even the embellishment of a wait staff, the center of attention here is the old oven, as it should be. Modified to burn gas a long time ago, Dilara restored the oven to its previous wood-burning glory, scalped a master baker from Antakya and the concept was born: traditional Turkish food prepared with a chef’s attention to detail and cooked by a true usta in the smoky, natural heat of the oven. That means lahmacun (we prefer the one with onion), pide (don’t miss the one with ground beef and pistachio), a daily guvec (i.e. dishes, from stews to white beans, slow cooked in a clay pot), a spinach and spicy Antakya cheese borek that is in a category all it’s own, and a rotating cast of traditional breads, including the old sesame-studded simit.  There are playful drinks on offer like Gazoz and little bottles of ayran, but we prefer to belly up for bottomless cay from the hulking samovar in the corner of the dining room.

Most days, Dilara works with Saban usta, who stands with a slight stoop, bringing him right to the height of the over door. For Dilara, the enterprise almost looks like an apprenticeship, with the veteran chef up to her elbows in ground lamb for tepsi kebab while the usta feeds the oven with a long wooden paddle. Turning away from Abracadabra’s arty fusion cuisine, chauffeured clientele and sweeping views to a business whose only assets are an oven and a delivery scooter might seem like an odd choice for an ambitious chef. But it’s one we applaud and sincerely hope to be indicative of a developing trend, one that sees greater cooperation between the traditional usta and the trained chef.

Within the strict boundaries of what constitutes traditional Turkish food, there is no magic sauce to fall back on. It’s all about technique and the quality of materials, subtleties that Dilara is not skimping on here. Rather than reinventing the baked bean, her kitchen is manipulating every detail to tap vast reserves of flavor that many similar businesses left back in their hometowns when they made their migration to Istanbul. What you get here is delicious village food fresh from the oven, served in Dilara’s way, and once again as spontaneous as when she first fed us eight years ago.

Datli Maya’s Facebook page probably does the best job of summing up what the restaurant is all about. Beside a photo of a dump truck delivering a pile of wood for the oven, it simply says: “If we have wood, we have fire and if we have fire, we can make lovely food!”

Address: Türkgücü Cad. No:59/A, Cihangir (Behind Firuzaga Mosque)
Telephone: +902122929057
Web: www.datlimaya.com
Open everyday 8am-midnight

(photo by Monique Jaques)

Hayri Balik
We always feel a bit like a cheating spouse when we walk past our longtime favorite – albeit dry – fish spot, Arnavutkoy’s Adem Baba, toward Hayri Balik, a lovely little fish shack up the street. But sometimes, well after the brunching hour, we like to have something a little stronger than a Fanta with our fish. Any sense of guilt is quickly numbed, though, as we drain a cold beer in the afternoon sun sitting outside of Hayri’s humble dining room…..

Cukur Meyhanesi
Çukur serves up other meyhane classics, such as grilled lamb chops and kofte, but – somewhat unusually – the folks at Çukur  have also figured out how to grill Black Sea sardines, or hamsi! Long considered a lost cause by grill men for its tendency to slip through the grill and into the coals, hamsi is usually fried or baked. At Çukur they’ve thrown caution to the wind and worked about ten of these little squirmy fish onto a skewer and bookended them with tomato and pepper. Hamsi is agreeable in just about any form, but fresh off the grill the fish’s characteristic smack of the Black Sea is even more pronounced….

Furreyya
From the outside, Fürreyya Galata Balıkcısı, a tiny new restaurant in Beyoglu’s quaint Galata area, doesn’t look like much. Two tables, two stools at a short counter, a smoky grill and not much else. But Inside this modest fish shack beats the heart of a more ambitious place. The friendly husband and wife team who own the place and share kitchen duties used to run a restaurant in Istanbul’s upscale Bebek neighborhood, and it’s clear that Fürreyya is in experienced hands….

Kemal’in Yeri
The neon sign in front of Kemal’in Yeri shines like a “Last Chance for Gas” sign seen on the highway before entering the desert. In your rearview mirror are the crowded tourist traps of the Galata Bridge. Ahead lie the shipyards and decrepit chandleries of the Golden Horn. But Kemal’s Place is not only the last place to eat on this stretch of the Golden Horn, it’s one of the last places in all of Beyoglu where you can eat reasonably well on reasonable budget sitting outside beside the water without another hungry soul in sight…..

Mohti Laz Meyhane
“My heart starts pounding when a pregnant lady enters the room,” said Huseyin, the artist turned owner/operator of Mohti, a new “Laz Meyhane” in the back of the backstreets of the Asmalimescit area. While this might sound to some like the unsavory confession of a man with an exotic fetish, to us it was a breath of fresh air, redolent with the old-style charm of a classic meyhane patron, something that’s increasingly harder to come across these days….

Hayvore
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 Hayvore is a great – and affordable – spot to get acquainted with it….

(Editor’s Note: This guest post was provided to us by Olga Tikhonova, who writes a wonderful blog about Istanbul food and life in Turkey. To her credit, Olga has managed to track down what had long been a holy grail for Istanbul chowhounds: a local restaurant serving authentic Georgian food.)

For a while I have been skeptical about ethnic food in Istanbul: local tastes usually turned any restaurant serving foreign cuisine into something that was only a slight modification of traditional Turkish food. Yet recently I discovered a Georgian eatery producing authentic flavors without worrying too much about local tastes.

Emniyet Garajı, the massive bus terminal in Aksaray, sees hundreds of people coming and going every day from Georgia. Around the bus terminal you will find the essential infrastructure in place: ticket offices of bus companies, currency exchange booths and a few eateries. Everyone speaks Georgian. “It’s like a little Georgia here,” tells me Maho, a Georgian friend of mine. Georgia is only 24 hours and $50 away, which sounds like a good deal to Maho’s countrymen, attracted to Turkey by the poor economic situation in their country. Many are happy to make the trip to Istanbul and take up a seasonal job here to support their families back home.

I met Maho through some local friends and before yet another visa run he invited us to a restaurant. Sitting down for a meal and a few drinks is a big deal in Georgia, with arrivals and departures of all sorts being mandatory occasions to do so. 

A five-minute walk away from the Emniyet Garaj we stumbled upon a spot graced with a sign that said “Cafe Euro.” While I considered heading onwards, Maho pulled me by the sleeve. “Here we are!” he said. We entered a place with a couple of simple tables and chairs occupied by a bunch of smoking men. Dyed-blond hostess Eka behind the counter cheek-kissed with Maho, indicating a certain familiarity between the two.

“My cousin used to worked here. Was good money, you know,” Maho explained. “Why did she leave?” I asked. “She was tired of drunken brawls and fights on weekends,” he replied. I thought of a dramatic difference between an ethnic eatery that interprets foreign flavors for the enjoyment of the local public and a place that serves the original thing to immigrants. Cafe Euro has clearly got enough publicity among Georgians in Istanbul not to worry about catering to locals.

Meanwhile, things started materialize on the table. First came the plates, knifes, forks, water glasses and tiny tea glasses with no tea. A small plastic bottle of a transparent liquid arrived. Maho opened it and poured some into the tea glasses. If you are familiar with the concept of homemade vodka you may be interested in trying chacha, proudly brewed in each self-respecting Georgian household. Otherwise you should stick to something commercially produced.

Such as tarkhun. Tarkhun is a carbonated drink deep green in color based on the extract of tarragon, a green plant with a slight hint of anise. Tarkhun is the invention of a Georgian pharmacist in late 19th century which got a new life as a mass-produced carbonated drink in the Soviet Union. The drink was our Sprite, just million times better, if you ask me.

Soon the food started arriving. There is no menu at Cafe Euro: just like any Georgian restaurant it features the same range of specialties and assumes you know what you want.
First arrived khachapuri, Georgian savory pies which immediately showcased both the simplicity of the flavors and the heights of the cook’s skills. Piping hot, they are sliced into segments revealing the generous quantity of cottage cheese stuffed inside. The leavened dough tastes just like the grandma would make – a little sour and nicely buttery. A couple of bites down I was perfectly full and happy about having submitted to the Maho’s requests of coming here. Then the lobio arrived.

Lobio is a Georgian bean dish that can be served as a side dish or as a stew. Either way, the dish is made up of a combination of red kidney beans, tender cilantro and the tangy touch of garlic. The garlic bites your palate, while the beans smooth things over and the smell of cilantro adds sophistication. Cafe Euro made a hearty side verion of lobio and after eating one serving I thought I couldn’t eat any more that night. And then the khinkali arrived on the table.

Khinkali are Georgian dumplings featuring assorted stuffings of either minced meat, potatoes or cottage cheese (with meat being definitely the most popular). While belonging to the same family as Turkish manti, khinkali provide a different eating experience. Think of them as dough sacks in a size of a large fig hiding a significant amount of meat inside. The dough puffs as it boils and makes space for a delicious broth to develop inside. The idea is to eat khinkali without losing any of the broth. Just like figs, khinkali have a little neat tail on top. You grab them by this tail, turn the dumpling upside down and take a small bite from the side where the broth has collected (careful, its very hot). The ladies at Cafe Euro clearly know what they are doing as the dough is thin, the meat plenty, and the broth delicious.

“There are a few other Georgian places around but everyone comes here,” Maho notes with satisfaction after the third shot of chacha. I could see why. Cafe Euro is probably not the place you would like to end up in on a Saturday or Sunday night – unless you are in a mood for watching a chacha-fueled fight (no kidding). But this is exactly why Cafe Euro remains such a well-kept secret. It’s a Georgian cafe proud enough not to care about the local tastes.



Address: Bostan Sok. (or Bostan Aralığı) Aksaray
Hours: Daily 10 am to the last guest

(photo by Olga Tikhonova)

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)

Tarlabasi

In almost a decade of living in or near this neighborhood we’ve come to appreciate its blemished beauty, but, as much as we’ve tried, never managed to find a restaurant worth mentioning.

Then came a tip from a reader promising great pide just off of Omer Hayyam Caddesi on the Tarlabasi market street, Kurdela Sokak. As most of our business on this street falls on Sundays, when the street is filled with fresh fruit and vegetable stands, we’ve never noticed the little sign reading “Etli Pide Salonu” with a black Camel logo. Oz Develi has been obstructed by the Sunday market here for 18 years with Ahmet “Five Fingers” Besparmak working the oven, six days a week. Here they serve a very particular style of pide made in Besparmak’s hometown of Develi, near Kayseri. In this tiny pide shop, only a few tables and chairs stand between the front door and the oven. On the walls are pictures of Ahmet in Develi in the 1970’s, glossy posters of Develi pide, and a memorial poster to the “Martyrs of Develi”, soldiers from his hometown killed in battle. In case, you missed it on the way in, the name, Oz Develi, means “pure” or “authentic” Develi. That’s hometown pride.

Develi pide is a type of Kayseri pide or, to use a less subtle name, etli ekmek, “meaty bread.”  If the classic Black Sea style of pide is canoe-shaped than this is more of a flat and wide barge. True to its name etli ekmek is not going to be topped with cheese or slathered in butter, as it is in the Black Sea. This is a stark production; the dough is adorned with knife-cut beef, diced tomatoes and peppers only. It is then fired in a traditional brick oven that occupies the back half of the room.

The resulting pide is quite light and crispy. We tasted the sweetness of ripe tomatoes as the peppers gave a quick kick cushioned by the lean and lightly seasoned beef. The loose arrangement of ingredients, devoid of any grease or binding agent, like cheese, allowed each voice of this pide choir to sing.

Across bustling Tarlabasi boulevard, in the back of the Beyoglu fish market, “famous” and “historic” pide joints line the street serving the same soggy old fare. We’ll gladly stick to our local option, if not to spend a little more time in the Tarlabasi backstreets, but because, pide at Oz Develi is simply the real thing.

Address: Kurdela Sokak 6A, Beyoglu
Telephone: +902122503438

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

Step out of the dingy stairwell of the Rumeli Han and into Govinda’s Vejeteryan Evi and you will feel as if you’ve crossed a cosmic divide. The warm and cozy room has café tables, pillowed floor seating, walls covered with a friendly looking blue deity and gentle chants that play over the sound system. The color palette at this Indian vegetarian restaurant is dominated by orange and yellow, as if the high exposed brick walls and handsome old wooden doors were painted with vindaloo sauce and saffron. We’ve written before about the parallel universe that exists in the Taksim area’s Rumeli Han – oddball shops, anarchist bars – and Govinda’s, which is run by members of the Hare Krishna movement, fits right in. But beyond the novelty of the place there are genuine good intentions and a menu that offers some variety to the offerings of the typical Beyoglu esnaf restaurant.

“The thali system says the body should get 5 flavors to create a peaceful, balanced mental and physical state,” said Balarama, founder of Govinda and of the next-door Indian Cultural Center, who greeted us upon arrival with a smile and a slight bow, his hands pressed together.

Thali, the ubiquitous Indian lunch, is a sort of subcontinental value meal that includes four or five small bowls of food. One recent day, the thali at Govinda’s consisted of an excellent stewed eggplant with tomatoes and onions, zucchini soup, rice cooked with carrots and crowned with a little pakora, a green salad and little cookies flecked with raisins. In the eggplant dish and zucchini soup we felt the hint Indian spicing without being overwhelmed, as if the cook were rationing from a dwindling stash of garam masala. Balarama told us the cook didn’t favor heavily spiced food, but, upon request, she could be convinced otherwise. We’ll return with that in mind.

Don’t go to Govinda’s expecting an encyclopedic menu of Indian cuisine. The daily thali menu is all they serve, but the food is always fresh and accomplishes much in five flavors. This is a humble, honest operation that is vegetarian primarily and Indian incidentally. At only 9 TL for the thali menu, the only thing out of balance is all that leftover lunch money jingling around in your pocket.

Address: Istiklal Caddesi, Rumeli Han C Block, 1^st Floor
Telephone: (212) 252-7719
Web: www.govindasistanbul.com
Hours: 12pm-10pm (takeout and delivery available)

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

(Editor’s Note: In almost a decade of intrepid eating in Istanbul, we still miss the immigrant community restaurants we know from the American big cities where language barriers and foreign customs make a lunch into a real adventure. Istanbul has foreign communities and it has foreign restaurants but the two rarely seem to meet. It wasn’t until we visited Zeytinburnu that what we were looking for, Little Uighurstan.)

Thwap. Thwap. Thwap.

“Do you hear that?” asked Sean Roberts, an expert on Uighur culture and politics and our dining companion for the day. “They’re making the lagman.”

As if inspired by the image of a pizza-maker spinning dough on his finger like a basketball and tossing it in the air, lagman-makers have a similar choreography that includes a deep swing, a flip and a smack of the thick braid of noodles. But unlike pizza dough, lagman noodles have escaped mass production; they are handmade by definition. As fat and chewy as udon at certain points and thin like spaghetti at others, a bowl of lagman is full of surprises. The generous topping of sautéed finely-chopped lamb, fresh red and green peppers that came with the suyru lagman (guyru lagman comes with a more chunky variety of the same ragu) was a delicious and spicy change of pace from the milder Turkish pallete.

“This is a good lagman. I’m sweating,” said Roberts.

The location of these thwapping noodles was Zeytinburnu, an Istanbul neighborhood that seems almost as far off of the beaten path as the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar. The last stop on the tramway, it’s a busy little district with a pleasant central pedestrian boulevard lined with that particular style of concrete blocks present throughout all Turkish cities, architectural non-sequiturs. At street level on the main drag, it seems this area is all about the trade of leather jackets, much like the shopping streets of Laleli and Aksaray. But look a little closer and you’ll notice banners in Arabic script and blue and white star and crescent flags in upper level windows, an old-timer with a long stringy beard strolling down the main street in a black velvet skull cap with embroidered totems, the signs of a coherent community of people from a place in the west of China described as Eastern Turkistan, the Uighur of Zeytinburnu.

Often idealized in Turkey as the proto-Turks, the Uighur have enjoyed a privileged status since the 1950’s and their community in Zeytinburnu has steadily grown since then. Though it’s increasingly difficult to leave China and enter Turkey these days, newcomers still arrive regularly, like the cook at Turkestani Restaurant, who took our order with a bashful smile and not a word of Turkish.

We visited three Uighur restaurants in Zeytinburnu, sampling the large Uighur-style manti dumplings, somsa, a savory pastry stuffed with lamb and, of course, lagman. The food was all very good, but it was the scene that captured our attention. We were reminded of tight-knit communities in Queens or the West Bank of New Orleans, where restaurants play a key role in cultural preservation. At one spot, Pan-Turkic newspapers were stacked on one table, while the soft lilt of the Uighur language filtered through a privacy screen where a mother fed her children Kashgar kebab and teenagers gathered around a huge flat-screen to watch a Uighur crooner’s concert DVD.  At Ipek Yolu, another of the neighborhood’s restaurants, we even met the director of a local Uighur kindergarten.

In Istanbul, foreign communities rarely settle and thrive the way the Uighur have, so foreign restaurants rarely feel – or taste – authentic. But in Zeytinburnu, rest assured, there is a Uighur at the next table keeping the cook honest. The lagman will be as fresh and tasty as it is in Kashgar. And the noodles will always be audibly handmade.

Turkistan Restaurant
Address: 63 Sokak #5, Zeytinburnu
Telephone: (212) 547-3822

Urumci Lokantasi
Address: 50/5 Sokak #3, Zeytinburnu
Telephone: (212) 665-2813

Ipek Yolu Restaurant
Address: 60^th Sokak 28 (behind Ziraat Bankasi two blocks back, on the right), Zeytinburnu
Telephone: (530) 923-4088

It didn’t take a foodie detective to know that this place was the real thing. Many long tables sat in the shade under leafy sycamore trees and even more tables are on the porch of a long low building resembling a military barrack surrounded by all sorts of other little sheds, like a mother goose with chicks. Out front, a fat kid sat on an overturned bucket beside crate upon crate of fresh cherries sold by the kilo for 5 TL. The parking lot was full.

These were all promising signs, but the main attraction was in yet another shed, hand painted brightly with the Turkish words for “famous pit kebab” (and spelled incorrectly, at that). This is the kind of sign that we jam the brakes for. We’ve spent plenty of time on the road hunting down such famous pit stops – ‘Twix and ‘Tween in Centreville, that giant tent outside of Guadalajara, a nameless spot on the road from Termez to Dushanbe marked only by a lightbulb strung up in a tree. And here, on the way to Cankiri, we felt, once again, that we’d arrived at such a spot.

The Owl’s Throat might sound like an English pub, but this is a down-home roadside smoke shack complete with a pit master that looks the part. Burly and giggly, Bayram – his name, appropriately, means holiday – gladly took us on a tour of the facilities. We asked him where his meat comes from and he made a chopping motion with his hand toward a hill. “Over there,” he said. He showed us the pit where he roasts this very local lamb over smoldering coals throughout the morning. A blast of hot air carried the intoxicating scent of meat and smoke outward when Bayram opened the hatch of the cooking pit to pose for a picture.

Back at his post, he took down a browned side of meat from a hook hanging inside his glass display box – the glass all sweaty from the heat – and thwacked it apart with a cleaver on a log chopping block. He smiled as he did it. So did we.

The resulting two plates of meat, accompanied by a stack of freshly baked bazlama, a yeasted flatbread which is very similar to an oversized English muffin, was such a perfect roadside meal that we vowed to return, and we did. Bayram was still at his chopping block and the glass was foggy with freshly smoked meat. Cherries were everywhere. The tables were, once again, full of local families gathered around generous plates of roasted lamb. It was a perfect scene.

We were reminded of why we travel as much as possible – and by car.

Address: Cankiri Yolu 50km, Bogazi Kalecik, Ankara
Telephone: (Bayram usta) 0537-700-4666

(photo by Ansel Mullins)

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)