I checked off one of my “must do” boxes today— an Istanbul food tour.  I wanted to get a local insight into the food, it’s history and variety so a guided tour was the way to go.  Based on a food tour I had done before in New York, I knew it was going to be a full day of eating so I skipped dinner the night before to prepare.  I met our local guide at the south entrance of the Egyptian Bazaar, also knows as the spice market.  That market is south of the Grand Bazaar, although with the market area one big jumbled mess of streets warrens and aisles I am not sure why there is a demarcation between the two.  The tour group was supposed to be four people but only two of us showed up, myself and a guy from the UK named Chris who has been touring Turkey and was spending his last day in Istanbul.  So really, it was more or less a private tour!

Our guide, Onder (there is an umlaut over the O, but I do not have that on my keyboard) led us through a maze of aisles to a small out of the way shop for breakfast.  As I mentioned before, breakfast appears to be kind of a “thing” here and as you can see from the featured image, there was quite a large spread.  The main dish was scrambled eggs with tomatoes and spices.  Accompaniments were olives, four kinds of cheeses, breads, a red pepper spread, cheese in phyllo dough and watermelon.  Onder mentioned that there are over two hundred kinds of cheeses in Turkey and all four of our breakfast cheeses were different.  One was akin to mozzarella, one similar to feta.  One, a hard cow’s milk cheese was from the north of Turkey and one, a soft cheese was sheep’s milk cheese that comes wrapped in the skin of a goat.  They were all good.  My two favorite breakfast dishes, however, are shown below: a hazelnut spread and a ricotta type cheese smothered in honey.  Oh my!  It was hard to pace myself knowing breakfast was just the start of a heavy day of eating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After tasting everything and having a bit more of the cheese and honey than I should have, we left the small café and went to explore a bit of the Egyptian market as we walked to the nearby port.  Our next stop was in Asia (it feels so funny to say that) and some of the local shops and food stalls over in the Kadikoy district.  The ferry trip was a great opportunity for me to get some good shots of the Topkapi Palace (tomorrow’s excursion) and see some of the walls that protected this important Constantinople palace.  It only took about 30 minutes to cross the Bosphorous to the Asian side of Istanbul and we did not have to walk far from the port to find ourselves in another warren of market streets with shops selling everything you can imagine.  We stopped for Turkish coffee, although since I do not drink caffeine I had fresh orange juice instead.  They made Turkish coffee the traditional way, putting ground roasted beans in a small copper container, pouring in the water, then placing the copper container in charcoal to get the concoction boiling.  Turkish coffee is unfiltered and the grounds settle to the bottom of the cup. Apparently, with experience you learn when to stop drinking to avoid ingesting the grounds.  Orders told us that you can have your fortune told from the remaining coffee grounds, but unfortunately there was no one handy to so so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up next we tasted a “Turkish hamburger” also known as a “wet hamburger”.  Ironically, there was a McDonalds right next to the place we were sitting and Onders explained that before McDonalds was present in Turkey, some creative guys went ahead and created their own version of a hamburger, which is now a Turkish fast food chain.  The hamburger, which was a cross between a meatball sandwich and the sloppy joes I had as a child growing up in the Midwest, was considered “wet” because of the spiced tomato sauce that soaks the bread (sloppy joes…ground beef with spiced tomato sauce served on a bun).

I was already starting to get full and we were only getting started!  On the move again, we traversed an aisle with amazing displays of olives and dried fruit but even though I was tempted to get some olives, I was still wary of what the rest of the day would bring so after snapping a shot of the beautiful display I moved on. We stopped into what was essentially a deli, with one long counter of prepared salads and mezze and the opposite long counter displaying a good portion of the 200 different types of cheeses that Onders mentioned at breakfast.  He picked out his favorite item for us to try— rice stuffed zucchini.  It was good and had a slight sweet element to it that I could not identify- perhaps floral.  Leaving the deli, he pointed out a goat skin in the front window, where some of the sheep’s milk cheese we had at breakfast was curing (it cures for one year in the goat skin).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our next stop was for Lamacun which is a unleavened flat bread with a tomato/meat sauce on it.  To the uninitiated it might look like a pizza or a quesadilla, but the flavors were totally different.  To eat it properly you have to open it, squeeze fresh lemon juice over it, add parsley, smoked paprika and a powder from a berry (I forget the name of the berry), whose purpose is to cut the garlic, then roll it up and eat it.  It was quite a production but totally worth it.  The bread, which had been grilled had salt, herbs and spices embedded in it so the first mouthful surprised me with an explosion of different flavors. It did not taste like pizza nor a quesadilla!  Accompanying the Lamacun was a yogurt drink that is popular in this part of the world. I had tried some is Uzbekistan so knew what to expect- a slightly salty, watered down yogurt flavored drink.  It’s not bad, even though I know that description is probably not attractive to all.

We walked around the market area meandering our way to our next stop and found ourselves in the booksellers area.  This was a first for me; I had found lots of other items in various sections of the Grand Bazaar and the area around it, but no books.  But here were stall after stall of booksellers, even some in English.  We were headed for the seafood stalls to try some fresh mussels, Turkish style.  I had seen lots of vendors on the street with mussel carts but had not ventured to try them. I was glad to taste them under the more or less “controlled” condition of the food tour. We were served mussels three ways: regular, spicy and with a special sauce.  All had rice accompanying them. The spicy mussels were really spicy and both Chris and I simultaneously reached for our water after taking a bite- the water did not help much!  The special sauce variant had the most flavor, although apparently the special sauce is “secret” although it includes a bunch of herbs.

At this point we were slightly more than half-way done, with one more stop in Asia for donar before heading back to Europe (which sounds so weird to say…..).  You can find donar kabobs all over Europe and in the US, too.  The restaurant, Kebapci ISKANDER, (apologies to any Turkish readers on the spelling), Onders took us to was the origin of donar in Turkey.  The gentleman, Iskander, decided that instead of grilling (BBQ’ing) meat horizontally and having to constantly turn it and losing the fat, as it dripped into the coals, creating fire flare-ups, created a vertical system with an auto-rotation that is so recognizable everywhere today.  In addition, traditionally the meat should be lamb, so they still serve lamb at their restaurants, now into the fourth generation of the family.  Their traditional donar is served with bread, a tomato sauce, some veggies and yogurt on the side and, what surprised me the most, clarified butter poured over the top of the whole thing.  I watched, horrified and intrigued, as after the donar plate had been put in front of us, another waiter came along with a huge hot pitcher of clarified butter and more or less created a soup of clarified butter on our plate.  What dish could possibly be bad with that much butter???? It was also tasty because the lamb was really tender…. This is a restaurant popular with the locals who know the history; tourists don’t necessarily know about it.  Yum!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After savoring the donar, we walked back to the port to catch a ferry to “head to Europe” and our last two stops in the Galata district.  I had explored some of the Galata district already, but had not yet been to the area immediately adjacent to the banks of the Bosphorus Strait where Onders took us.  There are a lot of hotels and upscale shopping along this side of the district, no doubt because of the nice views of the Strait but also because this is where the cruise ships dock when the come to Istanbul.  The embankment along the Strait in this area can handle three large cruise ships; two were parked there currently.  There is an indoor mall open until 1am (!), numerous pubs and bars, and lots of restaurants and shops in the warren of streets that weave through the area.  Onders was taking us to try the traditional mackerel sandwich which is popular after a night of drinking or as a late night snack, in general.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The construction of the fish sandwich, which is more of a wrap, is complex with again, a herbed bread foundation and stuffed with fried mackerel, carrots, greens, onions and tomatoes and a sauce.  You can add hot peppers if you are feeling adventurous!  To go with the fish sandwich, it is traditional to drink a purple concoction made from turnips and black carrots rumored to ward off hangovers.  I tried it and it tasted like a salty red wine vinegar based sauce; great for roasting meat in, but not so much straight up!  The fish wrap was good, however, even with boring water as a chaser.

Final stop, desert.  We had a short walk to a café that is in popular demand by the locals late night for the traditional Turkish desert Kunefe.  Onders said it is hard to make at home (he and his wife have tried).  The base is a shredded wheat soaked in clarified butter (again!) and fried then inside is a kind of slightly sweet mozzarella cheese. Sugar beets and pistachios are also involved somehow.  It is served warm.  We also had some Turkish ice cream, which is apparently includes the sap of a type of gum tree as an ingredient which gives the ice cream a firm texture (I had to cut it with my knife).  Thank goodness for my sweet tooth, otherwise I could not have found the motivation to eat more food….. I am not eating tomorrow (seriously).   Finishing the desert ended the tour, so after thanking Onders and which Chris safe travels (he returns to the UK tomorrow), I headed back to my room to recover from my food coma and drink lots of water.  I highly recommend a food tour if you ever come to Istanbul!