Before boarding her late-night, first-flight to Istanbul, writer Irvina Lew was introduced to a variety of Turkish specialties at JFK’s newly opened Turkish Airlines Lounge, where labels identified them on the buffet table: Hummus (mashed chickpea paste), Lebneh (a spreadable soft cheese made from strained yoghurt), and Shakshouka (fried eggplant, pepper and tomato based huevos rancheros-type dish, sometimes topped with poached eggs). Like an amuse bouche that excites the mouth for the meal to follow, that first tasting readied her for the two-week culinary adventure ahead. In Türkiye (the official spelling as of January 2023) her carnivore cravings were satisfied by the grilled lamb and filet mignon main courses and her penchant for dishes starring fresh, seasonal vegetables was equally gratified. Did you know Istanbul has had a thriving network of urban farms within its ancient city walls that dates back 1500 years? And, in December 2022, the city launched the Indoor Vertical Agriculture Application and Research and Development Center. Enjoy this article about Istanbul’s Ottoman cuisine.

Save this article about Istanbul’s Ottoman-style cuisine to Pinterest. From top left: Pandeli restaurant entry, Gozleme pancakes, Tugra at Çırağan Palace, pomegranate salad, grilled vegetables, Turkish mezze, sea bass, the author and a cook making Gözleme pancakes, and lam pide. All photos by Irvina Lew. Graphic by RealFoodTraveler.com.

 Author’s note: The tragic earthquake that rocked southeast Türkiye and northern Syria on February 6, 2023, took place about 700 miles from Istanbul. It’s remarkable how personal it felt to me, because I made new friends during my first visit there and many of them, like so many Americans, came to work in the big city from elsewhere, perhaps from where the damage occurred and where they left family and friends.  I can only hope that the catastrophe won’t dissuade people planning to visit this memorable destination; these days, the people of Turkiye need Americans to visit more than ever. If tourists don’t travel there, it will hurt the economy which needs to rebuild and negatively impact this positive trend: “The number of Americans visiting Türkiye during the first half of 2022 was up 76.8% above the same 2019 pre-pandemic period.” I donate — and encourage others to give — to WCK, the foundation that Chef Jose Andres created to feed people where tragedies strike: https://donate.wck.org.

Istanbul’s Ottoman-Style Fare: Mezes, Kebabs, Baklava, oh my!

In İstanbul, you’ll discover authentic traditional or contemporary Ottoman cuisine, a cooking style that reflects Türkiye’s Roman, Greek and Ottoman cultures and the influences of its Sephardic Jewish and Armenian populations. Visitors taste this rich culinary legacy everywhere, from street carts to casual cafés, in sophisticated restaurants, at an opulent Ottoman palace and at the 53 restaurants recognized in the 2023 edition of the Michelin Guide.

Ottoman-style dishes prevailed at the wedding-worthy breakfast buffets presented at the hotels where I stayed for eleven nights: Çırağan Palace Kempinski, Conrad İstanbul Bosphorus and Hilton Bosphorus İstanbul. Each morning offered a myriad of amazing Meze appetizers, the small plate starters that were integral to many lunch and dinner menus: black and green olives, hummus, eggplant salad, minty yogurt, cucumbers and tomatoes and my newest favorite: Muhammara, a spicy, garlicky, red pepper/tomato/walnut pesto. These extravagant buffet stations were laden with cured meats, smoked fish, fresh cheese, fruits galore, plus sweet butter, fresh preserves and, of course, honey! Mini jars of honey appeared on tables or buffet stations; the Çırağan Palace buffet displayed a large, wood-framed comb of raw honey. Other classic components included dried apricots, dates and figs and a selection of nuts — crisp almonds, walnuts, pistachios, hazelnuts – and Turkish Börek — a flaky, layered-like-lasagna pastry with savory fillings, such as spinach and cheese or minced beef. Among the pastries, I only recognized the traditional Baklava, a rich, sticky pastry made of layers of filo separated with melted butter, filled with chopped nuts and topped with honey or sugar syrup.

Waiters at each hotel served coffee and freshly-squeezed juices –including pomegranate juice – and made-to-order omelets. The Hilton –which opened on a 14-acre hilltop in 1955 as one of Conrad Hilton’s first international properties – served a silky, smoked salmon that I ate every morning and one afternoon in the club lounge. On the second of five breakfasts at The Conrad, I felt a cold coming on and requested hot water and lemon; the waiter summoned an English-speaking manager who explained that she would like to prepare a soothing brew of hot water, lemon, fresh ginger and fresh mint, for me. Without my asking, and for subsequent days, room service delivered the hot brew. (It’s such a comforting drink, that I’ve been keeping a pot seeping at home, ever since I returned!)

Drinks aside, the breads were exceptionally distinctive and delicious. The popular Simit, the crunchy, sesame-salt-topped, braided, bagel-shaped, pretzel-like bread, is served in restaurants and sold by street vendors from colorful carts. Pide, a typical Turkish flat bread is as ubiquitous as pizza; although the word resembles pita. It arrives hot off the wood fired stove, with or without grill lines, and is sometimes topped, garnished or stuffed. Usually, Pide looks like an elongated oval with raised sides designed to contain the cheese or spinach or beef filling; and, occasionally, it’s topped with an egg. For the dish Dönor Kebabs, the pastry encases shaved slivers of lamb cut from the huge piece hanging on the long, vertical, cone-shaped skewer above a charcoal fire. After eating the Meze appetizer at lunch at Çırağan Palace Kempinski, which arrived on a glass artist’s palette shaped with shallow wells for each individual item, the Pide was served. On the plate, there were two round, pizza-looking pies, each topped with a lamb/beef mixture. My host suggested that I put some salad on top, cut a triangle wedge, fold it in half and eat it with my fingers. Yum!

Simit vendor.

Like many peripatetic travelers, I have my routines: one is to find a café convenient to wherever I am visiting, where I can linger, before moving on to my next venue. It’s irrelevant whether I sip a cappuccino or wine — or order enough to satisfy the server’s attention — I just like to sit, rest my feet, use the restroom, have a bite and savor the prior experience, for a few moments more and especially in some place beautiful.  At each of these seven eateries — and most are in or near must-see landmarks –I discovered something special.

Hungry for more? See what to expect on a Turkish gulet cruise.

Ottoman Cuisine at the Grand Bazaar

At the Grand Bazaar, in the Old City, visitors stroll from stall to stall — and bargain — for the Turkish gold, carpets, leather goods and designer replicas on display. Here, the highly recommended restaurant is Nusr-Et Steakhouse, where the halal beef is seared, sliced and put back into sizzling butter, to the desired degree of doneness, and the salad arrives topped with pomegranate seeds, corn and avocado. Dinner was appropriately priced, but for those who want to impress folks, I read that the 24-karat, gold-plated, tomahawk steak costs $1160 USD.

Salad topped with pomegranate seeds, corn and avocado.

Topkapi Palace

Before we exited the Topkapi Palace gardens, where Sultans resided between the mid-1400s and mid-1800s, we stopped at the outdoor café at Topkapı Palace Konyalı Restaurant. which has served Ottoman-Turkish cuisine, since 1969. Its multi-page, picture-book menu offers a range of authentic dishes and, inside the mansion-like restaurant, the vitrine displays sweets that look Parisian patisserie worthy. We sipped cappuccino before touring the Basilica Cistern, the exquisitely-lighted, sculpture-studded, newly-reopened site large enough to contain more than 17 million gallons of fresh water and supported by 336 marble columns, which supplied the filtered water for Topkapi Palace, since the 15th century.

Sweets displayed inside Topkapi Palace Konyali Restaurant.

Spice Bazaar

Pandeli Restaurant is an authentic Anatolian eatery with a century old history located, upstairs, at the entrance of the 17th century, recently-renovated, Egyptian Bazaar, aka, the Spice Bazaar, where rows of stalls display colorful spices and sweets. (I bought dried apricots, cinnamon and saffron as gifts.) Stairs lead to the blue-tile-framed dining room, where world famous celebrities (Audrey Hepburn) and leaders (Winston Churchill and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) have dined and which was awarded a Bib Gourmand, (Michelin’s nod to quality food at a good value). The original owner Pandeli Çobanoğlu, was an Ottoman citizen with Greek origins, who started out selling his famous piyaz (bean and onion salad) from a cart. Today’s traditional menu features hünkar beğendi, (slow-cooked lamb served on a bed of charred eggplant purée) and an eggplant pie served with a leaf of döner kebap. Dessert features vişne tiridi, a bread pudding soaked in cherry syrup and served with clotted cream.

It’s common to see spices and sweets on display in the spice bazaar.

Balat

In Balat, brightly-colored buildings line long cobblestone-streets and house a shop or café near a 15th century Sephardic synagogue and a 15th century Greek Orthodox church. We noticed a cook making Gözleme pancakes al fresco at The New Balat Café & Restaurant. She rolled out a small mound of dough, stuffed each round to order (with spinach or potatoes or meat), grilled it on an electric crepe-like skillet and served it folded and sliced, like an omelet. We had been introduced to the dish just two days earlier, at a small, roadside cement building in Cappadocia, where the cook shaped it into a half-moon and sealed the edges, like an empanada, before she cooked it; then, she rolled it into a cylinder, cut it in half and wrapped each half, in paper, like a burrito. We wanted another and ordered ours with a shared platter of crisp, grilled vegetables.

A platter of crisp, grilled vegetables.

Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM) 

Divan Brasserie Fuaye in the new modernist Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM) is an absolutely sophisticated stunning space where warm woods dress tall walls and ceiling height windows frame the view. Patrons of AKM’s cinema, art, theater performances and design library where book jackets boast familiar names, such as Hockney, Wright, Man Ray, de Kooning drink on a second-floor terrace that overlooks the city and the scenic Bosphorus or dine here under handmade glass balls that light the sleek furnishings, marble tops, muted colors and exquisite tableware. Turkish dishes favor meat: Köfte meatballs, Yoghurt Kebabs and Lamb Rack; Mediterranean items include Cacio & Pepe, pappardelle and pizza and, there’s sushi or Tataki tuna plus vegetarian options.

Dramatic tableware at Divan Brasserie Fuaye.

More opportunities for Ottoman Cuisine: Tuğra Restaurant

With reservations, the public can dine in two posh palace venues: Bellina, an Italian ristorante, and the opulent, Michelin-recommended Tuğra Restaurant. Both are located in the sumptuous palace building at the iconic Çırağan Palace Kempinski Hotel, which features eleven suites and lavish public spaces, where once, Sultans lived and now the elite now celebrate. A crystal chandelier descends over a multi-level grand staircase studded with crystal railings and surrounded by restaurants, ballrooms and meeting spaces. You enter through tall, wooden entry doors into a series of window-walled, art-filled, dining rooms –and the outdoor terrace—adjacent to the Bosphorus Strait. Contemporary Ottoman-style palace meals start with an amuse on the signature blue and white china; the Turkish Cold Mezze Platter features stuffed grape leaves, sautéed zucchini blossoms, slow-cooked, dried tomato purée, house-made basil cheese, strained goat cheese yoghurt with oyster mushroom, cucumber, onion and garlic. The Tuğra Signature Dish presents Chef Inanir’s interpretation of a traditional mixed grill, with meatballs, chicken skewers, lamb chops, a beef loin and eggplant yoghurt purée and the salad is studded with mint leaves, pomegranate seeds, vegetables and topped with an olive oil and pomegranate syrup dressing.

The Turkish Cold Mezze Platter at Tuğra Restaurant.

Beşiktaş

Alaf, which is listed on theworlds50best.com and has a Michelin recommendation, is a vibrant fine-dining restaurant with a roof-top cocktail bar overlooking the Bosphorus, in a Beşiktaş waterside neighborhood, near hotels, restaurants and not so far from the Beşiktaş stadium where the team of the same name plays football. Chef, Deniz Temel, who worked at top-rated Noma in Copenhagen and D.O.M. in São Paulo, presents a modern interpretation of traditional Anatolian, Kurdish, Armenian and Yoruk cuisine. The quote atop our tasting menu explains the concept: “…from the roots of the Anatolian nomads.” Along with colorful, cold dishes — a bean salad, mushrooms, sardines — there are some spicy starters, a cold bulgur soup and lamb pide cooked in a wood-fired oven!

Another version of lamb pide, this time elongated and cooked in a wood-fired oven at Alaf.

From Bebek to Balat, eating in İstanbul is amazing! For more information about Turkey, visit this website.

-Story and photos by Irvina Lew, Real Food Traveler’s Europe Editor

Please note, Irvina was hosted for portions of her trip to help facilitate this article. However, as is always the case with the writers and editors of Real Food Traveler, that doesn’t sway our commitment to providing our readers with an honest and objective opinion of our experience there. Learn more in our disclosures page. And learn more about Real Food Traveler on our About page.

Hungry for more? Get recipes for iconic Turkish dishes in this book.