Food of Istanbul – tasted in the short 4 days

Love the following food below…since I was there only for a short time, I was determined to try my best not to eat bad tourist food. LonelyPlanet might not the the perfect guide but double check with New York Times on Istanbul, you would probably in a much better shape.

Here are some of the cool stuff I tried.

The best fresh sardine sandwich along the Galata Bridge. Visit the first diner, all the others are not very good. This one is fairy reasonable, nice staff they cook the sardine fresh just outside of the resto, open seating. There’s a lot of locals come here so it’s a good sign.

If bread is not your thing, just have the grill fish instead. The salad is bad so just eat the fish, dont forget to squeeze the lemon juice they have on nearby.

Along the Istiklal area, all the resto are really only cater to tourist, this one Konak was the most ok serving quite decend kebab, the real thing, rather different to the durum we’re familiar with. The bread is however quite a lot and thick. Always with a very spicy grilled green chilly, this dish is actually quite yummy with the kebab well marinated to Turkish taste. The ice cream here is awful so dont bother.

(Bread entree)

The bread goes with this dippping: tomatoes compte/puree with olives and oil. Perfecto.

More food from this organic quirky restaurant, very difficult to find and we went there for lunch but they asked to come back around dinner. We really want to try so we came back. The staff is uber friendly and nice, menu is small but big enough to have a good organic Istanbul typical dishes: a lot of seafood.

This is great to share, a plate with different fishes: the sardines are sublime, all servied with capers, onion, dill and of course with white wine. Totally worth it.

Some more dishes we ordered:

 

Above: trip, and my friend had lamb meat. I noticed all Turkish food always have the fresh chargrill green chilly. For my main course I had seafood stew with tomatoes. Basically all of the dishes here are mezze, just the modern kind. Restaurant address: Ece Aksoy no 9 Otelier Sokak in Tepebasi area. They have a website too.

Inside the Istanbul Modern is the trendy chic cafe by the river with great view. It might be crowded as this is also the regular affluent locals hang out, and everyone is trying to take the good view tables….worth a visit though esp after viewing the collection down below.

And when we’re too tired for going out, staying at the W hotel, their menu is super small but rather decend enough. Modern cuisine with a touch of Turkisk flavour. This salad below is quite a standard with shaved Parmersan but taste refreshing.

My main was lamb with pistachio nut crushed coated, a very Turkish thing, cucumbern yogurt side salad.

and of course the traditional Turkish breakfast: along the French street