Istanbul: FOOD!

FINALLY!  The food post!  Sorry for the delay... May was a hectic month.  So of course you know we fell in love with the spice market and were overwhelmed with the variety!  We finally decided to purchase Iranian saffron, smoked paprika, sweet paprika, red chili flakes, turkish delights (pomegranate was our absolute favorite flavor), figs, and the best dried apricots I've ever tasted in my life (and if you know me, you know I'm addicted to dried fruits... so you know those apricots had to be amazing)!

And now about breakfast... you see the little cart in the street below?

These are simit vendors and they are everywhere... morning, noon and night.  For 1 TL (Turkish Lira) you get this Turkish bagel that tastes like a toasted sesame bagel with a bigger hole in the middle.  No cream cheese, no peanut butter... it's most delicious eaten plain while walking down the street.

Now the highlight of our first hotel in Taksim Square was the breakfast buffet.  This put American continental breakfasts to shame!  EVERYTHING was delicious: yogurt, 4 types of homemade jams, fresh bread, pastries (although not sweet pastries like I'm used to), turkey bacon (Michael appreciated the effort they made in this Muslim country), olives, cheeses, quince (my new favorite fruit!) and great dried apricots and figs that we stashed in my bag for snacks the entire week!  We must have devoured like $40 worth of dried apricots and figs that week... the figs were especially good.  


I must also mention the brunch at Yıldız Palace with a raw honeycomb sheet on the buffet table.  You just took the knife, sliced off a piece of honeycomb, and popped it in your mouth!  It was fabulous! 

Next we move on to appetizers.  Unfortunately from this point on, I don't remember most of the names of the dishes but I can guarantee that they were great if I took a photo of them.  I mean, fried meatballs with yogurt and tomato something-or-another??  How amazing does that look?  Mmmm...

This is a good segway to let you know that we updated our Istanbul google map to reflect "M+M Notes" that give our opinion of all the places we went to, most especially restaurants.

The bean dishes were always delish... cold or hot.

The Turkish really love their mezes and presentation seemed to be really important too!  Look at those little lids with the crescent moon lid tops... so cute!

Speaking of presentation, this was our most memorable waiter of the entire trip!

He even humored me by helping us take photos of the food!  All kidding aside though, the food was really good even though we were the only people at the restaurant.  Literally.

Did I mention the yogurt??  Amazing on everything!

Even on this sausage ravioli pasta dish that I recall being surprisingly light!

This isn't a great photo, but the grilled vegetables were out of this world!  If there's one thing Turkish know, it's how to cook over an open flame.  Perfection.

This was the restaurant we went to for Sania's birthday... I just loved how everything looked lit up... especially the bridge.

Maybe the best duck and poached pear I've ever had.

And MAYBE this would have been the best grilled fish intestines that I'd ever have... but we decided not to try it that night.

Instead, we got two of the fresh fish caught that day.  Since this restaurant was on the bridge right over the Bosphorus, and the fish were caught from the Bosphorus, it was a great experience and yummy too!  So easy to de-bone!!!

Now before I move on to desserts, I need to introduce you to Iskander Kabab with yogurt (of course).  We ordered this dish all the time!  In fancy restaurants like the one below:

And in hole-in-the-wall restaurants like below:

You couldn't go wrong... it was always a good choice!

And now for desserts.  You know Turkey is known for Turkish delights, baklava, and halva (well, you may not know about halva, but it's definitely more common than Katmer).  Katmer is pistachios and philo dough... always served warm... always delicious.

It's much thinner than baklava and you can really taste the pistachios, which is fitting because Turkey is very well known for its pistachios and hazelnuts!

This next dessert is also rather traditional and tastes like shredded wheat in sweet milk.  It wasn't bad even though it doesn't look like much.

On the contrary, here's a traditional pudding with sour cherry sauce... with tulip!  LOVE sour cherry!  I just don't understand why it's not more popular in the US.

OOOOOH.... and the ice cream!  Could not get enough of the ice cream!!!

And the chocolate pudding from Mado's (only the location on Istiklal Avenue) was addicting!  Sania and I tried another Mado's up in Ortakoy and it tasted like a jello pudding pack!  Can you believe it??? You can imagine my rage after my first bite.  Still upset about that.

All desserts pair well with Turkish tea!  (Beware, the little bowls with the cookie and the crunchy things are savory... not sweet!  I was not a fan.  Michael rather liked savory cookies.)

But if you'd rather drink beer, it was really simple!  You could choose from two: Efes and Efes Light.  Sometimes the menu only said "beer" and you knew exactly what beer you were getting... the national beer of Istanbul!

The national liquor of Istanbul is Raki, an anise-flavored spirit that tastes like licorice.  It was a little intense for me, so Michael had the hard task of tasting different brands every night so we could pick the best one to take home as a souvenir.  (Spoiler Alert: All the brands pretty much taste the same so we bought the cheapest).

As you can see, here's our raki bottle, our pomegranate turkish delights, and Michael's favorite candy bar in Istanbul: tadelle!  It was dark chocolate and hazelnuts.  That's pretty much always a recipe for success.

And that concludes our food post and our Istanbul trip posts.  This was such an amazing trip, but now back to our regular programming... mainly the backlog of recipes that I have to post!  Cheers!