Monday
Ehli Kebap: Slurper’s Delight
Southeastern Turkey’s culinary mecca of Gaziantep is best known for its baklava and kebabs. But lately we’ve been thinking that it’s soup that may actually be the city’s real crowning glory. Not just any old soup, mind you, but beyran çorbası, a stupendously delicious lamb-based broth that is usually slurped down for breakfast in Gaziantep.
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 whose advertised specialty is skewered liver in the style of Diyarbakır, 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 making beyran.
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. Continue…
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2 responses - Posted 06.20.11
Editor’s note: This guest post comes courtesy of Salih Seçkin Sevinç, author of the great Turkish-language food blog Harbi Yiyorum (loosely translated as “Eating, For Real”). On my last two journeys to the Gallipoli region, I made sure to make a stop along the way for satır et, an awesome dish ...continue
no responses - Posted 06.10.11
(Editor’s note: Over here at Istanbul Eats, we like to think of ourselves as köfte savants. While to the untrained eye köfte may look like nothing more than a grilled meatball, we like to discern differences in taste, texture and consistency in the different styles of this ubiquitous Turkish dish. ...continue
no responses - Posted 06.10.11
From a seat on the deck of a Bosphorus ferry, the little neighborhoods of the Asian side seem to have the same idyllic layout: a platoon of fisherman with long casting rods on either side of a small white boat dock in the foreground; a minaret poking through the foliage ...continue
7 responses - Posted 05.16.11
We like to think of Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar – open since 1461 – as the world’s oldest shopping mall. If that’s the case, shouldn’t the Grand Bazaar be home to the world’s oldest food court? That may be taking the analogy too far, but for us, the Grand Bazaar can ...continue
no responses - Posted 05.09.11
In our imaginary primetime lineup, a reality show called “Pimp My Kebab Salon” transforms a drab kebab shop into a grill palace suited to the tastes of the latter-day sultans. Surfaces are suddenly gilded in gold, fountains appear and everything is reupholstered under the watchful eye of the boisterous host ...continue
no responses - Posted 04.04.11
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6 responses - Posted 02.28.11
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8 responses - Posted 01.21.11
Editor’s note: As much as we love eating out, sometimes nothing can beat a home-cooked meal. But recently we started thinking about killing two birds with one stone and learning how to make at home dishes from some of our favorite Istanbul restaurants. With that in mind, we are happy ...continue
3 responses - Posted 01.17.11
Editor’s note: This week, Istanbul Eats hops on the bus and heads west to sample the Thrace region’s most famous köfte in its native environment. Guest writers Sherri Cohen and Alex Hallowell, Fulbright English Teaching Assistants at Namık Kemal University in Tekirdağ, have run the gut-busting gauntlet to bring you ...continue
4 responses - Posted 01.14.11
Perhaps it’s the proximity of the waters of the Golden Horn or the weathered wood interior, but we get a distinctly maritime feeling at Köfteci Arnavut, a tiny köfte joint in the historic Balat neighborhood. The members of the Iştay family, who opened the place in 1947, seem to think the ...continue