EatingAsia

Golden Oldies in Beşiktaş

It's no secret that we love most any restaurant, street stall, or food shop with a history. So it's only natural that we're drawn to Istanbul, a city so filthy rich in edible backstories that we could spend six months roaming, eating, shooting and asking questions, and yet still barely scratch the surface of its culinary history.

Take Beşiktaş, a slice of the city that -- for whatever reason -- seems to be overlooked by visitors. Sited on the European shore two pleasant ferry rides -- or a straight bus or combination tram-and-bus/or taxi journey -- from Eminonu, it's a bustling municipality built up around a sweet little historic center. If you go the ferry route, hop off and follow the crowds across a busy thoroughfare. Quite suddenly, you're in a neighborhood of brick-paved streets winding up and around a hill.

Sure, central Beşiktaş' lanes are lined with their share of tacky pubs and unattractive shop fronts, but the neighborhood's got heart -- in the form of a wonderful little fish market, sitauted at the intersection of several usually pedestrian-only lanes, and a few great eats that have stood the test of, well, more than a century.

Places like Yedi Sekiz Hasan Paşa, for example. This bakery was introduced to us last summer by our Istanbullu friend Evren, whose mother has been making her way to Beşiktaş for its fresh-from-the oven rusks, cookies and breads for as long as he can remember.

We didn't have to taste a single thing to fall for Yedi Sekiz; going on appearance alone, the place is a gem.

    

Enter and you're face to face with a portrait of the bakery's namesake, the generously mustachioed and stern-faced Hasan Pasa. The story goes that in the late 1800s Hasan -- a burly, brave illiterate who used the numbers "7-8" (yedi-sekiz) as his signature -- was tapped by Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid to bring order to the then dangerous, hooligan-ruled streets of Beşiktaş. The Sultan bestowed the military rank of Paşa  (pasha) on the young man, and he did such a bang-up job making the neighborhood safe that he enjoys near-saint status among its residents.

Across the shop from Hasa Pasa's countenance hang portraits of Ataturk, along with an evil eye and other good luck totems. Stretching between the two great men, is a tiled rear wall centered by a massive wood-fired oven.

 

In the middle of the room, warmed by the heat of the wood fire, is a vast terrazzo table covered with metal trays of more varieties of breads and other treats than one sould possibly sample in a single, or even multiple, visits.

More bounty is displayed in the bakery's front window.

With such an overwhelming selection, where to start? We can't highly enough recommend the acı badem, [ah-JUH BAH-dem], intensely flavored, crackly-outside-and-chewy-inside almond cookies reminsicent of Italian amaretti. It took us a few visits before we could even get past these wonders. They aren't available everyday, and don't come out of the oven till early afternoon.

We planned jaunts to  Beşiktaş around Yedi Sekiz' acı badem schedule, and never walked out of the bakery without at least two hundred grams' worth.

Other Yedi Sekiz highlights: coconut macaroons, a bit sweeter than the aci badem but just as deliciously moist,

 

portakalı [por-tah-KAH-luh] -- drier, less chewy biscuits heavily infused with orange flavor -- and tahinli [tah-HEEN-lee], massive, to-die-for coils of sweet flaky pastry layered with the most fragrant sesame paste. On our last trip to Istanbul we packed several of these back to Kuala Lumpur, where they survived very well for a month in our freezer.

Yedi Sekiz also does some lovely hearty breads, like these unsalted multi-grain rolls.

Just around the corner from Yedi Sekiz, a red and white awning says it all: "Kaymak-ful (Kaymak-y) Breakfast Here."

Most often described as Turkish clotted cream, kaymak can be made from cow, buffalo, goat, or sheep's milk. Depending on where you are in Turkey, it varies from thin as pouring cream to loosely solid and molded into thinly layered "cakes". Its a decadent accompaniment to sweets and is also eaten for breakfast -- especially in Van in eastern Turkey, where it's a central component in the gargantuan local breakfast spread.

It's also dangerously addictive.

This shop has been serving "kaymak-ful" breakfasts from its simple storefront breakfasts since 1895. They serve their luscious buffalo milk kaymak (just have a gander at that opening photo), which is made not far from central Istanbul, with a few simple accompaniments -- honey, bread, tomatoes and cucumber, eggs if you like, hot tea or milk.

The goods are served with a smile, and are best enjoyed leisurely at an outdoor table with a bird's-eye view of the comings and goings in old Beşiktaş.

Yedi Sekiz Hasan Pasa, Şehit Asım Caddesi. No 12, Sinanpaşa Mahallesi (neighborhood). Beşiktaş.

The bakery opens around 8:30am and closes in the late evening; the ovens are going all day. Little English is spoken and service can be a bit brusque when the shop is busy, but it's worth girding yourself for a little social discomfort and going for it. Have a good idea of what you want to buy BEFORE you get to the counter. Breads and rolls are purchased by the piece, but biscuits and cookies go by the gram, starting with 100 grams.

Beşiktaş Kaymakci, Koyici Meydani Sokak, Sinanpaşa Mahallesi, Besiktas. Open early in the morning until about 3pm (all-day kaymak-ful breakfasts!).

Famous Beans

We've long been legume fiends, and we both have a thing for white beans in particular. Maybe that's one reason we can't stay away from Turkey -- Turkish cooks do white beans like no one else.

Turkey's kuru fasulye (koo-roo fah-SOOL-yay), or dried white beans, vary in size from no larger than the nail of your index finger to half the length of your thumb. Cooked and cooled, they might be tossed with olive oil, vinegar, sliced onions, parsley, and chopped egg for a refreshing salad called piyaz. Or they might be pureed and eaten as a mezze. Or added to a meaty soup or stew.

Our favorite kuru fasulye preparation is often called simply ... fasulye. Stewed with onions, tomato (and sometimes red pepper) paste(s), lamb, plenty of butter and -- if the cook is very conscientious and cares not a whit about cholesterol -- lamb tail fat, dried white beans become the sort of can't-get-enough dish that haunts your dreams.

Write-ups on Turkish food, no matter how rhapsodic, rarely mention this dish. Maybe that's because it's a Black Sea specialty, and too little attention is paid to the wonderful cuisine of Turkey's northern-most region. Perhaps it's because kuru fasulye is such an everyday dish, an esnaf lokanti steam table staple. Truth to tell, the dish doesn't always live up to its potential.

So, with a few exceptions, for a really great fasulye you need to go to a specialist, a "white beanery" if you will. On our last stay in Istanbul we taste-tested the famous beans at two.

Ali Baba Kanaat Lokantasi is sits directly across from Fatih district's Suleymaniye Mosque, a must-visit site for every tourist in Istanbul. And there are plenty of tourists eating at Ali Baba. Don't let that worry you; there are plenty of Istanbullu eating there too.

The signage out front announces Ali Baba's pedigree: c. 1939. Inside, everyone's eating beans. Big, lush lima bean-sized beans sloshing around in a pool of thick tomato-and-red pepper meat gravy liberally spiced with biber (red chilies). That's Ali Baba's kuru fasulye up top in this post. It's served with nutty, buttery rice pilav and tursu, or pickles.

The page in my notebook headed "Ali Baba Kanaat Lokantasi" is empty. Apparently I forgot all about recording our meal as soon as the beans arrived. I remember Dave and I fought over the last bits of tart, salty pickle -- perfect match for the buttery beans -- , and that as good as the pilav was I for the most part avoided it in order to save room in my belly for all my beans, which were tingly with spice (sort of unusual outside of Turkey's southeastern region), tomato-ey, and rich with lamb and butter fat. I remember the couple at the table next to us having an intense, almost heated conversation and then falling silent as soon as their beans arrived. And I remember that after we left Ali Baba's I told Dave we'd have to go back again for another round because I hadn't taken any notes.

After lunch at Ali Baba's I was fairly convinced we'd eaten Istanbul's ultimate bean. But when the topic of legumes came up during my interview with a cafe owner in Galata and both she and the translator became almost giddy while describing the specialty of the house at a Tophane spot called -- no coincidence I'm sure -- Fasuli, I knew we had to investigate.

Fasuli's fasulye

Fasuli is a lovely old-style (though not old) restaurant -- think white tablecloths, heavy cutlery, black-and-white attired waiters -- specializing in Black Sea cuisine. Its menu is big and includes regional standards like corn bread and kara lahana (collard-y "black" cabbage) dolma, but don't be distracted. Everyone goes to Fasuli for the beans -- and on your first visit at least, so should you.

Smaller than the kuru fasulye at Ali Baba's, more like navy beans than lima beans, Fasuli's beans are cooked just so: long enough to render them tender and creamy but not so long as to turn them to mush. Fasuli's sauce isn't nearly as spicy as Ali Baba's, nor is it as tomato-ey. Mostly, it's just over-the-top rich with lamb flavor, which is strange because there isn't really much discernible meat in the dish. It's as if the kitchen has figured out a way to distill the essence of an entire lamb roast and 25 pounds of lamb tail fat into a single pot of beans. Fasuli's fasulye are buttery and no doubt very unhealthy. But that won't stop us from going back for more when we're next in Istanbul. We ate ours with the usual pilav and a tart, salty cacik (cucumbers in yogurt). The latter provided an almost necessary occasional break from the intensely shovel-icious fasulye.

In the end I'd be hard pressed to choose a favorite. Ali Baba's fasulye strike us as mid-day beans: sharply spicy enough to bring your brain into focus, not so heavy as to send you into a coma post-meal. Fasuli's version seem more like dinner material, something fantastically swoonworthy to reward oneself with after a long, bone-breaking kind of day. They invite slow, ponderous spooning.

Hayvore's fasulye are a late-coming contender for Top Bean

A complication in the taste-off: One morning we stopped in at new-ish Black Sea spot Hayvore for some laz boregi, a sumptuous pastry best described as pudding-filled "baklava". As we prepared to leave, a gorgeous black pot of beans appeared from the kitchen. We couldn't walk out the door without a spoonful or two.

Verdict: Hayvore's may well be Istanbul's next Famous Bean.

Ali Baba Kanaat Lokantasi, directly across from front entrace to Suleymaniye Mosque, Fatih.

Fasuli, Kilic Ali Pasa Caddesi (behind Kilic Ali Pasa Mosque), Tophane.

Hayvore,Turnacibasi Sokak 4, just a few doors from Istiklal Caddesi.

 

Our Istanbul Corner Place: Home Cooking With a Masterly Touch

A couple months ago I received an email from a favorite former editor: "We're going to Istanbul. Suggestions welcome."

When I have the kind of intense affection for a place that I have for Turkey and Istanbul in particular, I desperately want other visitors to end up feeling the same way. Especially if I've been talking (or blogging) a destination up, as I have in pretty much all of our Turkey posts, I feel obliged to point friends to the sort of experiences that have endeared that destination to me.

So began a series of missives, me to her. I emailed lists of favorite places and foods and restaurants, bullet-pointed tips on how a first-time visitor can get the most out of Istanbul/Turkey, food-focused suggestions from local contacts, stream-of-consciousness ramblings on everything from where to go for the city's best Turkish coffee to where to find the best breakfast spread. I even drew and scanned a map of Cihangir, the neighborhood where she'd be staying.

My map highlighted, with a few stars, what Dave and I came to think of as our "Istanbul corner place": a tiny cafe called Mucver. We stayed a few doors down from Mucver last June and then again in December/January. After our first taste of Mucver it became our go-to for great, soul-satisfying home cooking. In fact, a number of times we found ourselves diverting back to our temporary 'hood from elsewhere in Istanbul just for one more Mucver meal.

Olive oil-cooked spinach and coarse bulgur, stewed chickpeas

My map highlighted, with several stars in different colors, what Dave and I think of as our "Istanbul corner place": a tiny cafe called Mucver. We stayed a few doors down from Mucver last June and then again in December/January. It became our go-to for great, soul-satisfying home cooking. In fact, a number of times we found ourselves diverting back to our temporary 'hood from elsewhere in Istanbul just for one more meal at Mucver.

Named after the dish -- mucver (mooj-VEHR) is a grated zucchini "fritter" usually eaten with thick yogurt -- the cafe serves Turkish Mom Food With a Twist. Its dishes are the comforting sort that make you feel loved and cared for. The twist is that Mucver's gifted cook has been a caterer for over ten years, and so while there's anything fancy on the menu, the food shows the kind of attention to detail that that caterers tend to lavish upon their creations. Everything is delicious ... and just a cut above versions you've had elsewhere.

Emine prepares Mucver's daily menu in a kitchen around the corner

Shy Emine and her outgoing husband Gursel opened Mucver early last year. On our first visit last June business was just so-so. When we returned in December we were pleased to see the place pretty much packed out every lunch hour. When we stopped in for some takeout at 5-something on our last evening in Istanbul there wasn't much left to choose from. This is all good, because it means that Mucver is likely to be going strong on our next visit.

Mercimek koftesi, red lentil and parsley rolls tea eat with a squeeze of lemon

Emine cooks everything in a small garden-level kitchen just around the corner from the cafe. Walk Palaska Sokak at ten in the morning and you'll be assaulted by all sorts of unbearably tempting aromas. The menu changes daily, but vegetarian mercimek koftesi, hand-formed logs of tender red lentils seasoned with parsley, garlic, and red pepper, are a regular fixture.

There are always a few creative salads to choose from. On one visit in January we ate a pretty "green"-tasting mix of shredded Swiss chard and romaine leaves mixed with fresh dill fronds and parsley sprigs, garnished with a sprinkle of bulgur and a small mound of ruby red pomegranite seeds. Everything was dressed lightly with a lemony sour-sweet dressing.

Emine's brown lentil, pasta and mint soup (Jerusalem artichoke mash behind)

On a cold, rainy afternoon we sampled Emine's mercimek corbasi -- lentil soup, Turkey's breakfast of champions. Made with brown rather than the usual red lentils, many of which were left whole, it included thick, chewy pasta and loads of fragrant dried mint that, with a squeeze of lemon juice, rendered the soup as refreshing as it was warming.

Her zeytinyagli, or "cooked with olive oil" dishes, are not swimming in the stuff. Zeytinyagli yer elmasi ("earth/ground apple" -- Jerusalem artichoke) took the form of a pleasingly rough mash with studded with bits of sweet carrot. Though zeytinyagli dishes usually demand an accompaniment of good bread we spooned this up straight from the dish, and ordered one more.

Zucchini stuffed with lamb and rice

Emine has a way with ground meat. Her sauced lamb kofte (opening photo) or meatballs are light as air. Sauced with tomatoes and red pepper paste and aromatic spices (I think I detected nutmeg), they split in half with barely the nudge of a fork. Vegetable dolma, like the zucchini above, are stuffed with a similarly ethereal mixture of seasoned ground lamb, chopped vegetable "innards", and rice and topped with a finger of thick yogurt. Our last Mucver meal included a surprising, and wonderful, dish: moist, well-seasoned Turkish meat loaf swimming in silky smooth potato puree that would do an American midwestern grandmother proud.

Sutlu irmik, milk and semolina pudding dusted with cinnamon

The first dish to clue us in to Mucver's possibilities was not savory, but sweet. Our initial visit was for tea and dessert and on that day we swooned -- and are still swooning -- over sutlac (pudding) blanketed with crispy browned and sweetend kadaiyif. What an amazing pairing that was -- mild, uber milky pudding with the crunch of caramelized wheat threads.

We've never seen it since, unfortunately (the downside, if you can call it that, of the daily menu), but consoled ourselves in January with a slice of sutlu irmik tatlisi, a firm-ish milk and semolina pudding/cake dusted with cinnamon. Emine's caterer-ly touch: banana slices hidden inside the pudding, which is made in a bundt cake mold. Also noteworthy: mozaik, a firm slab of dark chocolate cake cum fudge shot through with crispy biscuit bits. (Emine has a thing for chocolate; there's at least one chocolate dessert a day.)

We can't close our ode to Mucver without a nod to its quirky, homely decor. Dave's favorite item, above: an old-fashioned diver's mask kitted out as a light. Gursel is quite a collector.

Mucver, corner of Palaska Sokak, just across from the mosque, Cihangir. Tel 0212-292-7918. Closed Sundays. A very generous lunch for two, including a few dishes, salads, tea and dessert, runs about TL 32.

The Open Arse of the Fruit World

No, EatingAsia has not gone pornographic.

The title's words are not mine, but Shakespeare's, employed in Romeo and Juliet to characterize the rather unattractive medlar fruit:

Now will he sit under a medlar tree,

And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit

As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone.

O Romeo, that she were, O that she were

An open-arse and thou a poperin pear!

I'd never heard of medlar before this last trip to Turkey. We spied this relative of the quince in several Istanbul markets. After a new acquaintance in Istanbul described the fruit's flavor (and clued me into the Shakespeare reference) we picked up a few hundred grams and left them on our kitchen counter to ripen.

And ripen they did. Or, more accurately, they "bletted" -- the word used to describe the rotting state in which the medlar is eaten. (I love the sound of that, by the way: "The fruit is bletted.") Unblettted, the fruit's flesh is hard and vanilla white. Bletted, it's mushy and brown, with the consistency of thick apple sauce.

You know the medlar is ripe when it's become wrinkly and is showing a wee bit of mold at the, er, open arse end. To eat it, spread the 'petals' and pry off the little 'cap' that sits in their center. Then squeeze gently, and the flesh oozes out the top. (You can also open it rather messily by ripping off the top and a few strips along the side and squeezing, as a market vendor did for us in this photo.)

The medlar is full of small hard seeds that you can just swallow or hold in your mouth as you use your tongue to separate them from the flesh. It tastes something like apple butter with a hit of lemon juice and some very ripe Bartlett pear thrown in. It's a comforting, autumn/winter flavor. Jelly is made from medlar, and we met a cocktail master in Istanbul who concocts a mixer with the flesh. But I can see it cleaned of seeds and spread as is, on a piece of toast with butter or between layers of a walnut cake.

Our new friendship with the medlar was an unexpected bonus of this wintertime trip to Turkey. We hope to meet again next year -- same place, same time.

Görüşürüz, Istanbul

Early last summer we returned to Turkey for the first time in just over ten years.

Before we arrived we wondered if Istanbul would inspire the same feelings it did the first time we visited in 1998 -- a curious mixture of displacement and centered-ness, strangeness and belonging, that inspired me to take up Turkish and return to Turkey with Dave the next year, and the next.

It did. And it still does. When a place fits, you know it. Just like that.

Görüşürüz, Istanbul. We'll be back. And we'll be looking for a way to make you a bigger part of our lives in the years ahead.

(In the meantime, stay tuned for some overdue posts from Istanbul, the Black Sea, and northern Anatolia.

Hamsi Quest

Here we are in Turkey, and it's hamsi (anchovy) season.

So we had this idea: eat our fill of the slim, silvery fishes in Istanbul. Then head to the Black Sea coast to sample them at the source. We flew to Ankara, picked up a car, and drove north to what we hoped would be our hamsi heaven.

Why the hamsi fixation? Neither Dave nor I grew up eating much in the way of seafood. Our first brush with strong-flavored oily fresh fish came only in 2003, when I purchased mackerel at a Saigon wet market, took it home, and grilled it Goan-style with a slathering of vinegary tomato and chili paste. Then that winter we vacationed in northern Italy, and I fell in love with acciughe in salsa verde -- Piemontese anchovies in green parsley sauce. We ate cured anchovies with bread and butter and snacked on fruity green olives stuffed with anchovy fillets. We carried a gigantic can of salted anchovies back to Asia in our luggage and never looked back.

But this trip marks our first prolonged exposure to the fresh specimens. And we've been hamsi hunting with gusto.

Two days after arriving we found ourselves in the kitchen of a Turkish food journalist, learning how to make the eastern Black Sea specialty hamsi pilavi (anchovy rice pilaf -- more on that to come). Upon the recommendation of a knowledgable food blogger (and fellow hamsi obsessive), we tried hamsi tava (fresh hamsi dipped in cornmeal and pan-fried) at Klemuri, Laz restaurant near Taksim Square, and followed that (on the same day, I think) with grilled anchovies at friendly Çukur Meyhanesi. On New Year's Day we ate hamsi ekmek (anchovy bread) at another Laz spot -- even leftover from the previous night, it was great. And then we packed up and took off for the Black Sea.

We had only six days, so we narrowed our hamsi quest to two western Black Sea hamsi nodes: Amasra and Sinop. In the former, a friendly town of just under 6,500, we feasted on fabulous hamsi izgara (grilled hamsi). At an old-fashioned white-tablecloth restaurant on the water, we ordered three portions to share. The hamsi arrived, lightly charred and fused into a single thin layer, on a platter twice the size of my laptop. It was a little embarassing really, but we soldiered through every last little fish, eating them whole -- and returned the next night for more. I think the waiters appreciated our obsession.

Then it was on to Sinop. Nine hours on a winding two-lane coastal road characterized by steep drop-offs and a severe lack of guard rails. It drizzled, and then it poured. We were tired, and sore from sitting.

We arrived in the dark and woke up to our first true blue-sky day of the trip. We bundled up, strolled the harbor, drank tea with fishermen, checked out the castle, and then went looking for a meal to match our grilled hamsi in Amasra.

We found it by accident, thanks to a fish seller named Mert.

Mert sells fish in the harborside fish shop opened by his grandfather. He works there with his father, his uncles, and various assorted other colleagues. Born in Sinop, Mert attended university in Istanbul. He earned a degree in chemical engineering and could have stayed on, but he chose to return to his home. "If you have money you can live like a king in Istanbul," he says. "But here in Sinop is a good life. I have a job, I have family, I have everything I need."

Mert loves fish -- that much is apparent the minute he begins talking about how to cook it. "I like to boil fish in just a little water. Nothing else. No onions, no tomatoes, just a little salt. That's the best way -- then you can really taste it."

It was 10 in the morning, and the sun glinted off the silver and black skins of the hamsi mounded in a bin at Mert's shop. When he asked why we were in Sinop in the middle of winter -- "You should come in the summer. Sinop is paradise in July." -- we replied: "Hamsi." Ahhhh .... Mert nodded in understanding. Then he invited us to lunch.

We returned at 1pm to find Mert behind the fish counter, gently tossing beheaded whole hamsi in flour as a skillet filled with a single layer of hamsi arranged in a pretty pinwheel sputtered on top of a single gas canister. The clean, ocean-y smell of the freshest fish frying drifted around the shop and out into the street, luring passers-by and customers in for a peek.

Mert placed a lid over the top of the hamsi and deftly flipped the pan over, then slid the half-browned anchovy'pancake' back into the skillet. After a couple more minutes he slid the fish into a metal bowl sitting on a low table next to the burner. He pulled a loaf of bread out of plastic bag hanging on a hook behind the fish display, opened a styrofoam containter to reveal the most gorgeous "take-out" salad we've ever seen, cut an onion into wedges, and sliced a lemon in half.

"C'mon, eat!"

Friends, we found our hamsi heaven. Steaming hot, their flour coating barely detectable, the anchovies were all crunchy tail and light crispy browned bits clinging to firm and plump, meaty torsos with a sweetness found only in specimens plucked from the sea hours before eating. Mert told us to use our hands and we did, picking the fish up by their tails and dangling them over our mouths before devouring them whole and following with bites of salad and bread.

And the hamsi kept coming, skillet after skillet, Mert's colleagues taking over at the "stove" when he went back to selling fish.

And you know what? These guys who live and breathe fish love hamsi as much as we do.

After we've eaten our fill (an embarassing amount of anchovies) Mert guides us upstairs to show us the addition his family has recently added to their shop: several floors, to house a fish restaurant. Customers will choose their fish from the display downstairs and eat it cooked as they like in one of several dining rooms boasting what must be one of Sinop's most spectacular views.

Mert's relatives will be in the kitchen. And come finer weather the restaurant's rooftop tables will undoubtedly be the hottest in town.

We're back in Istanbul now, still chasing hamsi. But we don't expect to enjoy another anchovy meal of this caliber for a very long time. Until we return to Sinop that is -- when the hamsi are running.

Mert's family's restaurant should be open in a few months. We suspect it will justify the effort of getting to Sinop. Mevsim Balıkçılık, No. 15 Tersane Caddesi. Tel. 368-261-3950.

Good-Bye 2010,

Hello 2011!

Best wishes from Istanbul for a peaceful, happy, prosperous, and delicious New Year.

In Istanbul, the Contrarian's Balık Ekmek

Anyone who visits Istanbul must eat balık ekmek (fish sandwich; balık=fish, ekmek=bread). Seriously. It's not codified in law or anything, but eating a grilled fish sandwich next to the water is as required of tourists in Istanbul as spending at least half a day dodging carpet sellers in Sultanahmet.

Unlike Sultanahmet's carpet sellers however, balık ekmek is something you'll want to revisit on subsequent Istanbul sojourns. We ate our share our first, second, and third times in Istanbul. This last trip was no different.

Most of those seeking the ultimate balık ekmek experience head to the sellers on either side of the Eminonu end of the Galata bridge. Grillers and servers sport embroidered Ottoman-ish (we're guessing) outfits that suggest they've been plying their trade in those very spots for, oh, centuries. They are an Istanbul grilled fish sandwich tradition and we can't complain about their product.

We also sampled balık ekmek on the other side of the Galata Bridge, next to Karakoy's fish market. On the weekends a couple of sellers there do a fine job, sprinkling herbs and ground red chili onto the mackerel fillets as they pop and smoke on the grill, and serving the sandwich with a generous squeeze of lemon, a decent amount of shrubbery (lettuce, carrots, tomato) and on request, a delicious smear of piquant chili paste.

(If you're looking for a sit-down experience there are a few casual restaurants beyond the fish stalls that serve sandwiches as well as fish plates. Take note: the sandwiches served on weekdays by a permanent stall steps from the bridge are dismal.)

 

But when it comes to must-eat grilled fish sandwiches in Istanbul we take a contrarian view. Forget Galata and head instead one span northwest to Ataturk Bridge. On the Fatih side, sandwiched between humble fishing boats and large Bosphorus tour cruisers, is a fish sandwich boat run by Mercan, a Kurd from Elazig in eastern Turkey. Mercan has been stuffing bread with grilled fish at this spot for a little over 20 years.

 

Cast your eyes on the peppers on Mercan's grill. This, he insists, is his southeastern (and Kurdish) improv on the classic Istanbul-style grilled fish sandwich.

"You can eat peppers then?" he confirms not one but three times before adding a few to our sandwich. 

 

What's good about Mercan's balık ekmek? The mackerel fillets -- generously proportioned -- and the bread, bearing a beautiful char from the grilled and perfectly sized, so that fish is not lost in a sea of dough. The salad, which is fresh and crispy and if you like, piled onto your sandwich freely. The peppers of course, soft from the grill and spicier than they might appear.

Mercan is open for business as early as 9:30am, which is when we stumbled across his boat on our way to Fatih. At that hour you'll share the waterfront promenade in front of which his boat is parked with only a few strolling locals and the occasional chatty Bosphorus tour boat captain idling before his first group arrives.

Pull up a stool and enjoy a grilled fish sandwich or two under Mercan's big blue umbrella. There are no queues, no crowds. It's hard to imagine a better start to a day.

 

Mercan's balık ekmek boat, at the base of Ataturk bridge on the Fatih side (across from Galata). 1 sandwich, 4 Turkish lira.

Göztepe, For the Love of Gözleme

If you visit one weekly neighborhood market in Istanbul, make it the one held on Mondays in Göztepe. The produce on offer is stunning, and the vendors are welcoming.

 

But mostly, the thing about the Göztepe market is ... there's gözleme.

We were introduced to Göztepe market -- and to its gözleme -- by Turkish food writer and blogger Tuba Şatana. Shortly after we arrived in Istanbul Tuba shot me an email offering, in a typical display of Turkish hospitality, to take us eating. So on our last Monday in town the three of us met at the Kadikoy pier and, after tossing back a bracing Turkish coffee and stopping into a historic sweets shop to buy some halva (delicious by the way, and highly recommended) we hopped into a taxi and headed to the market.

The Göztepe market is huge; a serious window shopper/foodie traveler/photographer could easily spend a couple of hours there working his or her way from one end to the other. There's a section devoted to clothing and household goods, but most of the stalls display fresh produce, dried fruits and nuts, cheeses and olives, and prepared foods. As Tuba and I surveyed pink-blushed peaches and apricots speckled with crimson wasp stings Dave wandered, letting his camera lead the way.

Then Tuba led the way to the gözleme stall. 

Anyone who knows Turkey knows gözleme, thin wheat flour flatbreads cooked on a griddle and folded around a variety of fillings such as cheese, mashed potatoes, and meat. Gözleme are ubiquitous and immediately appealing. Hot chewy dough pockets hiding something tasty -- what's not to love? We ate dozens on our first trip.

But as with any food, extensive sampling leads to a level of discernment or snobbishness, even. So let me say this: there are a lot of gözleme in Istanbul. And probably 90% of them aren't worth the calories.

 

But the gözleme at Göztepe are several cuts above, worth not only the calories but the effort to get to this suburb a bit away from the tourist-trod streets of Beyoglu and Sulthanahmet.

They're made to order by a family of women from Amasya, a lovely riverside town in central Turkey about two hours from the Black Sea coast. The dough is rolled out super thin on a floured table, filled to the customer's specifications (cheese and greens for us), and folded like a calzone into a half moon.

 

Then the gözleme is carefully transferred to a huge concave griddle shiny and blackened from use,

where it's lightly slicked with butter

and then coddled to brown-bubbled crispness via a bit of downward pressure from the wooden spatula and a carefully timed flip or two.

There is much to celebrate about the finished product, a sizeable snack measuring about 15 inches / 37 centimeters across at its base. The filling, a combination of tangy-salty white cheese, made in Amasya and carried to Istanbul by this family of gözleme makers, and shredded spinach and chard, announces its presence but is not so heavy as to weigh the gözleme down. The pancake has been cooked just long enough to soften but not liquify the cheese and to just barely wilt the greens, which retain their freshness and a bit of texture.

 

The wrapper, chewy at its center and ever so slightly cripsy at the edges, boasts a strong wheat flavor, and though it's been rubbed with butter it's not greasy.

Like an expertly grilled cheese sandwich, this gözleme tastes like sin but doesn't leave its stain on your fingers.

As if gözleme weren't enough, these women also make içli köfte, finger-length bulgur torpedoes filled with a chopped lamb and parsley. Most of the housewives amassing in front of their stall purchased theirs uncooked to finished at home, but we asked the ladies to fry a few up for us.

 

We bit into layers of texture and flavor: the köfte's greaseless, crackly outer skin gives way to mild, nutty nubs of tender bulgur and then the moistness of the rich meat filling sharpened with a fiery kırmızı biber (dried red pepper) kick. Though already full to near bursting with gözleme when we tried these we couldn't resist ordering a couple more

And shall I tell you about these ladies' baklava, layers of handmade thickish rustic yufka brushed with butter, sandwiching chopped nuts and doused with just enough sugar syrup to moisten but not overwhelm? Or their three apple butter-textured fruit spreads ranging from sweet to super-sour, one made with cranberries and boasting an intriquing whiff of warm spice? Or their homemade tomato and red pepper pastes? Or their zirod/siron, dried pinwheels of wheaty dough meant to be moistened with broth (a bit like the lavash for our piti in Kars) and topped perhaps with crumbled lamb, garlicky salted yogurt, and a drizzle of kırmızı biber and dried mint-infused melted butter?

Never mind, words can't do it all justice. For the love of gözleme, get yourself to Göztepe.

Gözleme etc. stall, Göztepe Monday market from about 10ish to evening. The easiest way to get to the market is to take the ferry from Eminonu or Karakoy to Kadikoy and catch a taxi 'Göztepe Pazari' (Goes-teh-peh Pah-zar-uh). These ladies can also be found cooking at the weekly market in Erenkoy (Thursdays) and Kozyatagi (Saturdays).

Thanks to Tuba Satana for sharing with us this market and its fabulously talented trio of Amasya cooks.