Istanbul travel: a food tour of Turkey takes a turn
Slowly my mouth begins to burn. Initially this is of no concern; we’ve all chomped on too much chilli at one time, and inevitably the shock, and the heat, abates. But not on this night...
Slowly and at first subtly, my mouth begins to burn. Initially this is of no concern; we’ve all chomped on too much chilli at one time, and inevitably the shock, and the heat, abates. But not on this night at this tiny Istanbul kebab joint, with its rickety roadside tables and tiny stools, and from where the potency of a nibble of flame-grilled pepper threatens to erase the memory of every joyous mouthful of our Turkish stay.
For the best part of a week we have feasted around this sprawling metropolis, downing pides and dolmas and boreks, and developing an unexpected affinity for ayran, the local salted yoghurt drink. Food has been a defining feature of our itinerary, since a first bite of simit, Turkey’s sesame crusted bagel, at a stall outside the Hagia Sophia mosque.
From morning until after dinner, we’ve navigated our way through the city’s gastronomic offerings ever since. There has been lunch at a Turkish workers’ cafeteria, and a particularly memorable feast of fried whitebait at Arnavutkoy, an art nouveau waterfront neighbourhood on the city’s European side. Everywhere, to the mouthful, Istanbul seems to be swathed in deliciousness. The high point of each day’s indulgences is dinner. As the sky darkens and calls to prayer bellow over countless loudspeakers, the city produces a smorgasbord of delights. There is no plan to where we stop; in a community of 16 million people, it doesn’t seem worth chasing specific recommendations when there are tasty offerings everywhere.
On our first evening, arriving late and tired, we head for a nearby eatery recommended by our hotel. Its laminated menu is plastered with photographs of every dish, and its prices seem unreasonably high, even considering the hyper-inflation that has beset the country. So we seek out the best-looking place nearby.
This proves a good strategy - the grill house we pick, we later learn, has hundreds of glowing reviews. Oryantal 1741 adjoins a 300-year-old Turkish bath house. Its upscale sister restaurant next door features a roof terrace, but we arrive late and are directed instead to an old shop front to one side of the bath house. Inside we are seated around a bronze-framed grill – with front row seats as a master griller expertly bastes and turns long skewers of meats and vegetables. Later, our waiter directs us to an adjoining doorway, for an impromptu tour of the bathhouse. As we leave, he presents us with a small cake of soap – adding to our mental souvenirs of an already memorable night.
And so ensues a succession of evenings dictated by happenstance. One night it’s a 60s-era bistro near Taksim Square, where elderly waiters, impeccably dressed, bring assorted vegetarian plates from the open kitchen. Another night, exhausted, we settle for a local cafe, whose fading vinyl-clothed tables suggest our run of good food is about to end. It does not. The stuffed vegetables, and even the bread we use to mop our plates, are delicious.
While the quality of meals remains high, the locations become successively less salubrious until, for our final night, we pick the tiny kebab stall. Near the Grand Bazaar, we spot it early in the day, noting the hordes of locals filling its small tables and lingering on the pavement for the next available spot. Only later do we read its enthusiastic online reviews. “The kabob of your dreams,” one diner enthuses. “All that flavour dancing in my mouth,” declares another. In hindsight, it might have been better to have heeded some of these words.
We arrive early, when the sun is still shining, and Istanbul’s streets are still thrumming with life. From the limited Turkish menu, we order two chicken kebabs, a Diet Coke and a glass of ayran, and then we score a vacant low table on the footpath. Dinner is served on a slab of paper: cubes of succulent chicken on a pile of shredded lettuce and vibrant herbs, a chunk of fresh pide on top, and, what seems to be the joint’s specialty judging by the numbers being served and readily consumed, a few chargrilled chillies. Everything is delicious and so enjoyable that I think nothing of chomping into a pepper. Its bite is minimal at first, so I eat some more, not realising that this topping comes with a slow burn.
It strikes the back of my mouth first. There it lingers, seems to strengthen, and when it fails to fade, I gulp some Diet Coke. Nothing. I drink some more, swill the stuff around my mouth, but this only seems to spread the burn to my lips. So I grab the half drunk cup of salty yoghurt drink on the table but even that doesn’t help. With my limited arsenal spent, I stand up and walk to the edge of the footpath, thinking, irrationally, that a few gulps of air will help, but of course they don’t.
Back at the table, and vainly downing yet more ayran, a shadow falls on our table. A local has vacated his stool at the adjoining table. “Please,” he says to me now, “I will be back.” A minute later he returns with a small dish of honey-dipped donuts from the adjoining stall and drops them on our table. “Please,” he says, “this will help.”
Only out of an abundance of politeness do I accept the toothpick he proffers, and skewer one of the balls, highly dubious that these bits of fried dough will help. But the searing heat in my mouth wins out. I scoff the donut, and almost immediately the burning stops.
Our tablemate, it turns out, is an Istanbul-based chemical engineer, who spends the next few minutes explaining the chemical reaction that set my mouth on fire and then calmed it.
His gesture is so moving that I can no longer recall anything about his honey-based explanation, which ends with a flourish as he writes down his name and phone number and insists that we call him if we want to know anything about his city.
We leave early the next morning, so there is no need to follow up on his offer. But the kindness of this stranger is unexpected and overwhelming – and lingers longer, fortunately, than even the most searing burn from the hottest chilli.
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