I really think I may have found the best burger in Istanbul. I liked it too much and I ate 1 and half…No kidding…Bye bye no carbs diet..
The place is Burger Joint, in Istanbul’s Besiktas. Cute atmosphere with lovely people and a ma ziiiiiing burgers….Try New York with Cheese and then thank me…The meat is cooked to perfection but I also liked the taste of their bread which is my deal breaker in burgers. Homemade lemonade and french fries are also worth trying…Now I have to diet for another month so that I can go there again.
Cool factor: Possibly making the best burgers I ate in Istanbul.
best burger in town I really think I may have found the best burger in Istanbul. I liked it too much and I ate 1 and half...No kidding...Bye bye no carbs diet..
Small is the new big…a definition well appropriate for my new find in town. Yasemin and Tuncel’s roastery and ice-cream shop. This little shop is tucked away in Gokturk, Istanbul’s posh suburb. Owned by a cute couple and designed by WallPaper design team (yes, yes, yes!) this little shop offers you a good range of coffee and home made Italian style ice-cream (gelato). I really liked what I…
I am often asked where to questions when it comes to Istanbul. And one of the key topics is always about breakfast…I have my usual suspects like Assk Kahve and Lucca but time to time I enjoy spicing it up and discovering new venues. Here is my latest venture…Located in the ever popular Sishane/Pera neighbourhood, Konsolosoffers champagne brunches on Sundays accompanied with a lovely Jazz…
Yes, we have scholarly sources, but these little friends are awesome! They completely surpass all of the tourist traps, and open up another world of eating; we're dining with the locals on those culinary backstreets, baby! Check out http://istanbuleats.com/ for more info.
I first became aware of kaymak while doing a bit (a lot) of research before we left for Istanbul. I was trawling the Istanbul Eats website and found an article about a traditional Turkish dish that was written with such passion and desire, I was sure this was something I couldn't miss. They descibe Kaymak as a 'delicious Turkish version of clotted cream' and go on to say that it 'is the only food served in heaven, where angels in white robes dish out plate after plate of the cloudlike stuff to the dearly departed, who no longer have to worry about cholesterol counts and visits to the cardiologist.' How could I resist?
Before our trip, I looked up some of the places Istanbul Eats listed as their favourite spots to try this sublime creation. The comments under their post made me think that Istanbul's winding streets, partnered with my horrendous sense of direction would mean I had no chance at all of finding either of these addresses. How could I get so near but so far? I couldn't possibly come to Istanbul and miss out on trying the classic Turkish combo of kaymak served with honey and crusty white bread. As soon as I knew this dish existed I had to find a way of sampling what they described as 'one of the finest breakfasts anywhere'.
We had arranged to join the Istanbul Eats walking and eating tour on the second day of our holiday. A wonderful seven hours full of sampling many, many delights started with one of the most memorable breakfasts of my life.
Hardly without us noticing, our tour guide Angelis gathered bits and pieces from various market and street stalls as he lead us round, chatting and describing as he walked, the five of us following behind him like devoted fans, hanging off his every word, mouths slightly open and ready to recieve any tidbits he handed out. A bag of olives here, some cheese there. A bag of simit (Turkish sesame 'bagels'), his bag was filling up and we didn't even know it.
We'd been told to arrive hungry and we soon discovered why. Angelis led us down an alleyway and into a 'han' - the large warehouse / storage spaces that form a part of the markets of Istanbul. Here we arrived at a desk papered with a newspaper tablecloth and surrounded by stools. We were invited to sit and soon the cay man arrived and we were offered tea or coffee. Angelis started to unpack his stash and lay it out in the table. Bags were ripped open and dotted around. A plate was then placed in the middle of the table, a pool of honey cascading over the creamy contours of the kaymak. Everything else blurred into nothing as I realised I was going to be able to try this fabled stuff at last.
I tore a chunk from the sesame simit and dragged it through the kaymak and honey. The toasted, nutty taste of the bread with the thick, creamy, sweet mixture was incredible. Utter joy mixed with mild panic when I realised this was like nothing I'd ever tasted before and was sure to be hard to find away from Turkey.
We ate it a few more times during our stay and as we neared the end of our holiday I started to wonder whether I could get hold of it back in England. A quick Google and I came across details of a shop that apparently stocks it - The Turkish Food Centre in east London. I promised myself I would seek it out as soon as possible. I also started looking into how easy it would be to make. Kaymak, like so many of the good things in life, is wonderfully simple. It is made from milk (or some recipes list milk and cream) – preferably from domesticated water buffaloes, known as “manda” in Turkish – which is slowly boiled (we're talking all day - about eight hours). After chilling, a thick layer of very rich, pure white cream forms at the top and this is the kaymak. I can only describe it's consistency as similar to clotted cream, but a little more liquid. Perhaps like Greek yogurt mixed with clotted cream? It's also not as rich or sweet as clotted cream, but it's definitely not salty. Just thinking about it is making my mouth water, but it's very hard to describe. Will it be as hard to produce? I intend to find out. Stay tuned!
Breakfast time! I know, you're still full from last night's dinner. Don't let that stop you! We're on a food tour so buckle up, things are about to get hairy. Actually, no. Wrong word choice. Apologies.
We're eating with the working men, keeping things local. Just how we like it.
Also how we like it (or at least I do): artichokes, freshly prepared and waiting just outside the door.
Now that breakfast is out of the way, it's time for morning tea. Of course! We really are on a food tour. It's run by Istanbul Eats and involves approximately seven hours of walking and tasting our way around the modern (-ish) centre of Beyoğlu. Our tour guide Jen is a San Franciscan who has lived in Istanbul for the last five years and somehow finds the energy to lead our group of six around the back streets, answering thousands of questions along the way. (And actually, we now know how she fuels herself, so the energy is a little easier to understand.)
We were secretly very pleased to find that many of the stops on the tour were located in Cihangir, just ten minutes walk from our (fabulous!) accommodation. One of our favourite local stops was Datlı Maya, a gorgeous little bakery-cum-restaurant squeezed into three tiny floors of an old wooden building.
One of the oldest bakeries in the area, the owners recently converted the old oven back to wood from gas and churn out all kinds of delicious goods throughout the day.
During the tour Jen picked up a few pastries for us to sample along with the pickles from a shop a couple doors down... but we took it upon ourselves to taste more of the menu during our next few days in Istanbul. A firm favourite.
Pickles! Anything that can be pickled can be found at this traditional shop, its windows stacked high with colourful glass jars.
There was a little neighbourhood sightseeing involved as well, to give our stomachs time to prepare for the next onslaught. One of my favourite sights in Istanbul are the fire escapes:
Aaand onto the next one. Just to reassure you, all of this food was spread out over many hours and we generally only sampled one or two dishes between the seven of us. So it wasn't quite as extreme as it looks. Still pretty extreme though. At Hayvore, another "working man's lunch" style restaurant that specialises in dishes from the Black Sea region, their hamsi pilav (baked anchovy over rice with currants, spices and pine-nuts) was met with groans of pleasure from the crowd.
This guy, a little further down the track, was manning a small shop selling fried anchovies that we threw back like hot chips as we perched on small wooden stools at the back of his stall. When our shivering began to look a little pathetic one of his boys dragged over a metal drum and filled it with a few white hot coals from their grill. They sure do hospitality well in this country.
There was mutual excitement when we visited a local butcher shop specialising in offal and the butchers there realised that a certain someone in the crowd actually knew what he was asking about. Butcher respect. Double respect for anyone game enough to down one of these puppies:
Unfortunately for Adam he was the only one up for it but couldn't have tackled it on his own.
Back to something a little more familiar: durum kebap, at Durumzade, made famous by Anthony Bourdain in his TV show No Reservations. The hype was very much lived up to. This is no greasy, drunken, late-night snack loaded with "your choice of three sauces!". No, this is the real deal, relying on the quality and cooking of the meat on a coal grill with the simple accompaniment of sumac-spiced onions and tomatoes. The only sauce you'll find here is the juice from the meat itself, and you'll find that is all you need.
You'd think you'd be done by now, right? Ha. Wrong. The Turkish are crazy about sweets, and we're talking soaking-in-sugar-syrup sweet.
Or pastry-soaked-in-milk-and-sugar sweet.
Or pistachios-covered-in-sugar, layered-with-pastry-and-soaked-in-more-sugar sweet.
You probably need a little something to take the edge off by now? How's about some Turkish coffee?
You'll want to give it a minute since it's unfiltered and you need to let the grit sink down to the bottom. Does the trick though.
And everyone knows you can't have coffee without a little something sweet, and lucky for us Jen had picked us up a delicious chicken pudding to share. Seriously, chicken. Pudding. And it actually tastes good! With a rather sticky, gelatinous texture that takes some getting used to, the chicken (extremely finely ground) provides the substance to an otherwise milky, vanilla pudding. Who'da thought?
"The trick" being: somehow allowing you to find room for just one more taste! Can you believe it? We couldn't? But somehow we pushed on through this stuffed aubergine. Tough job.
He was definitely impressed, as you can clearly see:
So that's it for our food tour, folks (for today, at least). Any questions? You want a nap? Too bad! We've only got a few more days in this city and still so much to see! So we'll squeeze in a visit to the Blue Mosque, cool?
Cool.
It really is rather breathtaking.
If you like, we can pay a visit to the man in the side room and ask him questions about Islam. Though he probably won't be as interested in a dialogue as we would like. If you're very nice though he might give you a Quran to take home and study.
And that's the day gone. You did good. Get rested. More tomorrow.
**PS. I hate doing these "sorry for the delay" things, which is why I've left this one for the very bottom. We have many many many photos to share with you and meant to do so sooner, however we've had a bit of a run of bad luck, primarily involving losing our (mine and Adam's) passports (four of them!! Including my British Visa!) at some point on an overnight bus trip. While this totally sucks we are pretty lucky to have insurance, and were especially lucky to have found ourselves in the care of one very kind hotel owner (more on him later) who helped us get everything sorted to get new passports on their way to us in time for us to leave the country! So, needless to say, it's been a slightly hectic last couple of days but things are on the up now. And we have some serious catching up to do!
