Friday
Sıdıka: Last Night a Meze Saved Our Lives
Dear readers, we have a confession to make: over the last few weeks, we were in a serious culinary funk. The main problem was our own lazy habit of sticking around our home base of Beyoğlu when it came time to forage for new places to eat. The neighborhood, of course, has no shortage of restaurants, especially these days, when it seems difficult to keep up with all the new places opening up in the bustling district. But most of these new places have left us cold, if not downright disheartened; they seem more intent on packing in the crowds to offset their high rent than on providing good, interesting food (or, as in the case of new place we saw descriptively called “Shot,” serving any food at all).
Just when things started looking desperate, tipster ST whispered a mysterious word in our ear: Sıdıka. Continue…
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no responses - Posted 11.08.10
Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Salih Seçkin Sevinç, creator of the fantastic Turkish-language food blog Harbi Yiyorum (loosely translated as “Eating, For Real”) and the man behind our recent mouthwatering series of reports from Gaziantep. Kanatçı Haydar started providing services in the chicken wings sector beginning in 1996, ...continue
3 responses - Posted 11.05.10
(Editor's Note: Since it turns out that "DTVAE," our favorite Uighur restaurant in town, is closed while the Ottoman-era building it is in is being restored, we thought it might be worthwhile to again run this review of another excellent Uighur spot -- which happens to be right around the ...continue
3 responses - Posted 11.01.10
The Turkish term “usta,” which means master in the Jedi sense of the word, seems to have lost its meaning in Istanbul. Any fellow wandering the streets with a screwdriver in his pocket seems to enjoy the honorific. In the kitchen too, we’ve found, there are plenty of unchaperoned apprentices ...continue
5 responses - Posted 10.29.10
As we’ve written here before, if you do a little rooting around, the Grand Bazaar can be as much about the food as it is about the shopping. Case in point: Aynen Dürüm, a microscopic kebab shack at the edge of the sprawling bazaar that serves exceptionally good wraps (or, ...continue
3 responses - Posted 10.25.10
Cemal Bey sits behind a desk in a small, bare office on the second floor of a decrepit building near the Egyptian Bazaar in the city’s old quarter. Three large burlap sacks filled with what look like jumbo-sized yellow raisins are all that adorn the room. That and a fax ...continue
3 responses - Posted 10.22.10
(Editor’s Note: Although the culinary roots of skewered meat hail further to the south and east, Istanbul has very much become a kebab town. After the jump is a highly subjective list of five of our favorite places in town for kebab.) continue
4 responses - Posted 10.19.10
Like Clark Kent hiding his Superman tights beneath a brown suit and glasses, Klemuri maintains the appearance of a predictable, Beyoğlu café -- wooden tables, shelves loaded with knicknacks, Buena Vista Social Club on the stereo, spinach crepes and a crispy chicken salad on the menu. But down in the ...continue
no responses - Posted 10.18.10
With the arrival of fall, Today's Zaman goes exploring the rich culinary scene of Adapazari, an area not far from Istanbul that's famed for its pumpkins. As the article makes clear, though, Adapazari has much more to offer on the culinary front. The article can be found here. continue
8 responses - Posted 10.08.10
The closing of the landmark Pera Palas Hotel for renovations over the last few years meant we no longer had access to one of our favorite watering holes in town, the hotel’s classy yet cozy bar. The 19th-century Pera Palas, of course, was the elegant place where the passengers of ...continue
2 responses - Posted 10.06.10
While we're on the subject of seasonal arrivals, we just noticed while walking past Sakarya Tatlicisi, one of our favorite dessert shops in town, that ayva tatlisi (literally “quince dessert” in Turkish, although “quince in syrup” might be more accurate) season has begun. In late spring, we were lucky enough to get ...continue