Turkish Cuisine Istanbul: A Complete Food Lover's Guide

Istanbul's food culture is one of the world's great culinary traditions — a cuisine that served as the kitchen of three empires and incorporated the flavours of the entire Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Caucasus, and the Middle East into a culinary synthesis of extraordinary depth and variety. Eating in Istanbul means encountering a food culture that distinguishes between breakfast (kahvalti), lunch, and dinner with a seriousness that makes the Western approach to daily eating seem casual in comparison. The Turkish breakfast alone — a spread of cheeses, olives, tomatoes, cucumber, eggs, jams, honey, clotted cream, and freshly baked bread accompanied by endless glasses of black tea — is one of the finest meal experiences available in any city.

The essential Istanbul eating experiences include: a slow-cooked lamb doner carved from the vertical rotisserie at a quality kebab house in Beyoglu; fresh fish sandwiches (balik ekmek) from the boats moored beside the Galata Bridge; mussels stuffed with herbed rice and lemon (midye dolma) from the street sellers on Istiklal Avenue; and a plate of mezzes at a traditional meyhane (tavern) accompanied by raki, the anise spirit that is the Turkish national drink. Each of these represents a distinct thread in Istanbul's food culture and together they cover the spectrum from cheap street food to convivial evening dining.

The Beyoglu district's back streets between Istiklal Avenue and Karakoy contain some of Istanbul's most interesting contemporary restaurants, where a generation of Turkish chefs are working with traditional Anatolian ingredients and techniques through a modern culinary lens. Karakoy itself has become the city's most fashionable food neighbourhood, with excellent breakfast cafes, natural wine bars, and innovative restaurants occupying the converted warehouses of the former port district. The weekly Bogazici Organik market in Ortakoy and the Kadikoy produce market on the Asian side provide the ingredients that sustain Istanbul's food culture from soil to table.