Istanbul is the only major city in the world that sits on two continents, and it eats like it. Here the cooking of the Balkans meets the cooking of the Levant; the Black Sea trades flavors with the Aegean; the old Ottoman palace kitchens, which once employed more than a thousand cooks divided into guilds for soup, for halva, for pickles alone, still echo in the way a modern meyhane lays out its meze. To eat across Istanbul is to eat across an empire's memory, and you can do it in a long weekend if you pace yourself and accept that here, breakfast is not a meal but a sport.
We came over the water on the ferry from the Asian side at dawn, gulls wheeling over the wake, tea already going cold in our hands, and we did not stop eating in any meaningful sense for three days. What follows is a map of appetite: where to begin, what to order, and why the most important Turkish word you will learn is not teşekkür ederim but afiyet olsun — may it do you good.
Kahvaltı: the breakfast that swallows the morning
Start where Istanbul starts: with kahvaltı, the Turkish breakfast, which is less a meal than a tablescape. A proper spread arrives in a dozen or more small dishes that cover every inch of cloth — white cheese and aged kaşar, olives green and black, slices of cucumber and tomato, honey still on the comb beside thick clotted kaymak, a fan of cured sucuk sausage sizzled in a copper pan, jams of rose and sour cherry, and a basket of bread refilled until you beg off. In the middle, inevitably, a tulip glass of black tea, refilled before you notice it is empty.
Go to the neighborhood of Beşiktaş or the cafés along the Bosphorus in Çengelköy on the Asian side, where the breakfast culture is a local religion. Order menemen, the soft scramble of eggs with tomato and green pepper, served in the pan it was cooked in. Give the morning to it. There is nowhere you need to be that is better than this table.
In Istanbul you do not schedule breakfast around the day. You schedule the day around breakfast, and the day is better for it.
The meyhane and the slow art of meze
If breakfast belongs to the morning, the evening belongs to the meyhane — the tavern, an institution as social as it is culinary. You sit, and a waiter brings a tray of cold meze: smoky eggplant köpoğlu, sea-beans dressed in olive oil and garlic, fava purée, stuffed vine leaves, octopus, the tangy yogurt-and-herb dishes that cool the palate. You point at what you want. Then come the hot meze — fried calamari, sautéed liver Albanian-style, börek pastry oozing cheese — and only much later, if at all, a main of grilled fish.
Through all of it runs rakı, the anise spirit that turns milky-white when you add water, the drink the Turks call aslan sütü, lion's milk. The rhythm is the point: small plates, small sips, long conversation, the table slowly filling with empties and the room growing warmer and louder around you. We spent one such evening in a meyhane in Karaköy that did not turn over our table once in four hours, and we understood that this was not slow service. It was the entire idea.
The essential Istanbul plates
Street: a sesame simit from a red cart, balık ekmek (grilled-fish sandwich) at the Eminönü waterfront, and a midye dolma (stuffed mussel) with a squeeze of lemon. Sit-down: İskender kebab (sliced döner over bread, yogurt and brown butter), mantı (tiny dumplings under garlic yogurt), lahmacun, and pide. Sweet: baklava in Karaköy, künefe (warm cheese pastry in syrup), and a Turkish coffee read for your fortune.
The bazaars: a thousand smells at once
No food trip to Istanbul is complete without the Mısır Çarşısı, the Spice Bazaar, where the air is a physical thing — cumin and sumac, dried mint and rose, mountains of Turkish delight in every color, towers of pistachios and apricots and saffron. It is touristy and you should go anyway, early, and buy the things that travel: a bag of Maraş chili, a slab of good baklava, a tin of the pistachio paste that will haunt you when it runs out. Then escape the crowds to the Kadıköy market across the water, where the locals actually shop, the fishmongers are theatrical, and a glass of fresh pomegranate juice costs a fraction of what it does over the bridge.
Getting there & getting around
Istanbul Airport (IST) is the major hub on the European side; the metro and the HAVAİST buses reach the center. Buy an İstanbulkart on arrival — it works on the metro, trams, buses and, gloriously, the ferries. Take the ferry at least once; the crossing between continents at sunset, tea in hand, is one of the great cheap pleasures of travel. Stay around Karaköy, Beyoğlu or Kadıköy for the best eating within walking distance.
Crossing the water for dinner
The greatest meal of our trip was not in a famous restaurant. It was on the Asian side, in Kadıköy, at a tiny ocakbaşı grill where we sat at the counter and watched a man cook over coals for three hours. He grilled lamb chops and quail and skewers of marinated chicken; he charred whole peppers and tomatoes until their skins blistered; he handed us pieces directly off the grill on torn bread because the plates could not keep up. We did not have a reservation and did not need one. We had only to sit down, point at the meat in the case, and trust the fire.
That is the secret of eating in Istanbul. The city is enormous, ancient and occasionally overwhelming, but its food rewards a simple posture: arrive hungry, sit where the locals sit, order what is in season, and let the meal take the time it takes. Somewhere out on the water a ferry is sounding its horn, and the call to prayer is winding over the rooftops, and a waiter is setting down another glass of tea you did not ask for and absolutely want. Afiyet olsun. May it do you good. It will.
Priya Raghunathan
Priya is a contributing writer who covers the food cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and South Asia. She believes the fastest way to understand a city is to take the local ferry and follow whoever is carrying the most bread.