how to eat well in istanbul by anya

How to Eat Well in Istanbul by Anya von Bremzen

How to Eat Well in Istanbul

Turkey's largest city is the ultimate culinary crossroads, a food

lover's great adventure

By Anya von Bremzen

Gypsy mackerel and fresh walnuts are in season when I arrive in

Istanbul. As my plane rattles along the runway I flash back to the

most bewitching meal of my life: breakfast on an Istanbul commuter

ferry. A single cucumber and a fistful of olives. Dense, chewy bread

rings slathered with salty cheese. Sweet black tea. Perhaps it was the

Bosporus breeze, or that fabled skyline doused in pink light. I

remember being intoxicated with pleasure-- savoring Byzantium, picnic

in hand.

That was more than a decade ago. I've returned several times since,

and, I have to confess, it's not the mythical ocher glow of Hagia

Sophia, or even the thrill of plucking a perfect kilim from the

mercantile bowels of the Covered Bazaar that lures me back. No, it's

the Istanbul of that sweet tea, sipped from a tulip glass in the

sensuous shade of a �ay bah�esi (tea garden); harborside lunches of

silvery fish; the infectious aromas of grilling; the ambrosial

sweetness of Anatolian melons. It's the dozen-leaf pastries in

fragrant syrup-- and the thousand and one secrets of Ottoman

seasoning.

Sultan's Pantry

Actually, the Ottoman cult of the kitchen bordered on the absurd. When

Sultan Mehmed II, called Fatih (the Conqueror), erected the Topkapi

Palace shortly after plundering Christian Constantinople in 1453, he

equipped it with a domed kitchen so vast you could mistake it for the

imperial mosque. And that from a man famous for dining solo! At the

height of the empire, separate battalions of cooks were assigned to

kebabs and pilafs, to pancakes, candies, and drinks-- plus a small

battery for each of the six varieties of halvah. Sauces were plotted

as though they were conquests; janissaries-- the sultan's elite

troops-- discussed state matters around a stewpot, or kazgan; and

imperial chefs rose to become viziers.

The Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1923. But Turkish dedication to the

wealth of its cuisine lives on, in unassuming neighborhood

restaurants, epic kebab houses, rickety waterfront fish shacks, and

glamorous dining rooms overlooking the Bosporus. To the traveler with

an appetite for Mediterranean flavors, Istanbul, where Europe ends and

Asia begins, offers a last great adventure.

Bosporus Breezes

Exhausted after a 10-hour flight, I sentence myself to the luxury of

the Four Seasons, a former prison recently reborn as an exquisite

small hotel just steps from the Hagia Sophia. My friend John is due to

arrive later that night.

A sweet voice on the telephone: "Anya, dear! Do you need Bosporus air?

My driver can pick you up at seven." It's Engin, a local food critic I

met recently in Crete. Throughout our weeklong stay, she will tend to

us with unflagging zeal-- Turkish hospitality personified.

Of course I need Bosporus air.

Forty minutes of screeches, hoots, and jolts take me to Bebek-- a

genteel neighborhood of tilting wooden villas and fashionable open-air

caf�s, home to patrician businessmen and foreign diplomats. At the

speeches on Turkish cuisine. We sit on a creaky terrace right on the

water, grazing on fried calamari and eggplant dips, and sipping raki,

an aniseed-flavored firewater. A stately waiter anoints the grilled

fish-- small, delicate gypsy mackerel (technically, baby bonito) and

l�fer, a rich bluefish from the Black Sea-- with reverential trickles

of olive oil. Engin chuckles. "For centuries we've been cooking with

olive oil, but what did it take for us to notice it? A vogue for

Italian food!"

A Walk Around Beyoglu

The next morning John and I meet our friend Ferda for a spin around

her stomping ground, old Pera, or present-day Beyoglu (pronounced

bea-ho-loo). This former European quarter, with its weathered grand

hotels and resplendent ex-embassies, gradually took on a sleazy cast.

Then in 1990, its main boulevard, Istiklal, was closed to traffic,

cleaned up, and transformed into a pulsating thoroughfare. Now you can

shop for expensive scarves at Vakko, Istanbul's answer to Barneys;

dive into a murky alley for sheep-knuckle soup; collect 19th-century

prints from one of many antique shops; then bob to techno at an

after-hours club.

The heartbeat of Beyoglu is Balik Pazar, a cacophonous market stuffed

with everything edible, and some things that don't quite look it.

While the Spice Bazaar in the Old City is pure Ottoman Stamboul, Balik

Pazar and the famous �i�ek Pasaji, an arcade fashioned on Parisian

models, are relics of turn-of-the-century cosmopolitan Constantinople.

I unleash years of cravings for Istanbul food in Beyoglu's clamorous

side streets. At H�sseyinin we join gaggles of shadowy men for

straight-off-the-grill meatballs, or k�fte. A search for su b�rek-- a

lasagna-like wonder of dough stacks and salty cheese-- lands us in

Lades. With spick-and-span tiles, hunched-up old regulars, and daily

specials ordered from bubbling pots in the kitchen, it's an archetypal

lokanta, or family-run restaurant. At Babane, a cute new caf� down the

block, a pair of women decked out in folkloric gear squat on raised

platforms to knead, roll, and fold dough into g�zleme, marvelous

turnovers stuffed with spinach, potato, or cheese.

Ferda takes us to her own eggnog-yellow caf�, Zencefil (ginger), which

specializes in vegetables. After spending some years in Montreal,

Ferda introduced Istanbul residents to quiche ("First they spat, then

they came back for seconds"). We're too full to eat, so we return

another day for big bowls of Aegean tomato soup accompanied by

herb-flecked bread, black-eyed-pea salad with pomegranate dressing,

eggplant b�rek, and a great baked pear stuffed with a plum. At the

next table, lipstick mavens sip ginger lemonade, absorbed in Turkish

Marie Claire. It could be London or Paris, but then that's what

Beyoglu has always aspired to.

Best Meat

"Five years ago, kebabs were considered plebeian, now they're all the

rage," an Istanbul friend insists. I believe it when Engin and her

husband, Nuri, invite us to dinner with an airline president, a

hotelier, and a shipping-magnate couple with his and hers fleets. The

place? Develi, a modest kebab house that threads legendary skewers, in

the quaint lower-middle-class neighborhood of Samatya.

Develi has all the charm of a departures lounge in a third-world

airport: bright lights, bare walls, commotion. Its five floors are

jam-packed with turbaned clerics, clerks in crumpled suits, and

endlessly extending families rubbing shoulders with Japanese tourists

and platinum-card-holding CEO's.

The mezes (hors d'oeuvres) are wonderful, from tabbouleh-like frig

("made with wheat harvested when it's still milky and dried over

charcoal smoke," Engin explains) to a beguiling sweet-and-sour

concoction of mashed tomatoes and pomegranate molasses. But it's

Develi k�fte we're after-- meatballs of lamb painstakingly ground by

hand and grilled to succulent perfection. We try pistachio k�fte,

smoky pillows punctured by nuts; �ig k�fte, spicy raw lamb wrapped in

lettuce; onion k�fte; sesame k�fte; and ali nazik, k�fte sizzled with

paprika-hued butter and served on a bed of thick yogurt. Each meatball

is a short essay in texture.

I sigh. After this mincemeat epiphany, burgers are ruined forever.

Looking

for Perfect Fish

Eating fish on the Bosporus-- a narrow strait that separates Europe

from Asia, connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara-- is a

quintessential Istanbul pleasure, but trying to find the right place

can be downright maddening. Restaurant recommendations are as abundant

as carpet shops, and they usually go something like this: "Definitely

try X. The waiters are sweet, the atmosphere precious; we've eaten

there forever. But the food . . . " A shrug. Of course, there is the

glamorous K�rfez, where honeymooning John F. Kennedy Jr. feted his

bride. But bookings are hard to come by, even though locals dismiss it

as touristy.

A cheaper and more diverting option is to take a sightseeing ferry

from Emin�n�, where the Golden Horn begins, to the last stop, Anadolu

Kavagi-- a village on Istanbul's Asian side suffused with the smell of

frying mussels and grilling fish. We lunch at Yosun, which looks out

on a tangle of water taxis, fishermen's dinghies, ferries, and yachts

festooned with wriggling garlands of mischievous boys. The fish is

simple and fresh, and nothing special, so we keep looking.

We finally catch up with our gilled Holy Grail-- a perfect sea bass,

moist, charred, and pearlescent-- at Feriye, a smart waterside

restaurant in the arty neighborhood of Ortak�y. Even with its view of

the ornate Ortak�y mosque, Feriye feels like a Santa Monica brasserie.

But it won't for much longer. Vedat Basaran, the ambitious impresario

behind Istanbul's current Ottoman revival, plans to convert the

restaurant (his 29th) into a temple of imperial gastronomy. To prove

the gravity of his intentions, he tips a dusty pile of cookbooks onto

our table. "Rare editions . . . in Arabic, English, Old Ottoman . . ."

We sneeze, grin respectfully, then tuck back into our fish.

High Life with a View

If one could eat views, Istanbul-- with its dialogue of shore and

strait, its magical skyline boosted by rocketlike minarets, its

nighttime glimmer of water traffic-- would offer the world's most

sumptuous banquet. But even in a city where panoramic restaurants are

as ubiquitous as kebab dives, Ulus 29 redefines tip-top dining.

The restaurant is announced by a steep driveway lined with luxury

German sedans. This glassed-in semicircular space offers a wide-angle

view of the two Bosporus bridges. Ulus is buzzing with first dates,

company banquets, diplomatic dinners-- and that's on a weeknight. But

then, the proprietor, Metin Fadillioglu, is the grand vizier of

Istanbul high life.

The setting, designed by his wife, Zeynep, deftly reprises this

Eurasian city: lush, mismatched upholstery and crisp white linens;

nooks and crannies garnished with Orientalist Neoclassical objets;

mosque lanterns cheek by jowl with trendy lamps from London. Zeynep's

eye for detail runs in the family: her cousin is London-based fashion

designer Rifat Ozbek.

"Panoramic dining experience" is, of course, a code phrase for lousy

food. I hold my breath as we order. Whew . . . our choices don't