Your Guide to Turkey: Food

Simit

I have a philosophy about traveling and food-- all foods fall into two categories

*Foods You Should Try and
*Foods You Really Should Try

Usually, the foods that sound normal, tasty, and comfortable fall into the first category.  All the other foods are in the second.

Paul finds this philosophy very distressing.  I find it adventurous.  Usually we end up meeting in the middle by the end of a trip.

So..anyway...Let me tell you about drinks!

Sahlep dude with...thingy

SAHLEP:  On our second night there, I saw a street vendor pushing around this cart with a giant brass...thermos/liquidheater...thingy...on it.  There was a sign on it that said, "Sahlep."  I stood there with a Turkish lira in my hand, literally hopping with anxiety, trying to get up the courage to ask for a cup (I was still new to the whole "I'm in Turkey" thing).  Paul just stood there being exceedingly distrustful of sahlep.

I don't really blame him because when he asked me what it was I said, "It's, like, a hot...orchid root...drink?"

Yeah.  Tasty sounding huh?

But here's the thing.  It is tasty.  It's like drinking...uh...drinking...okay.  Imagine you have hot chocolate.  But it's really thick and creamy.  Okay, but now it's white chocolate.  And now...it's not chocolate, it's just white?  And now there's cinnamon on top.  (Also it's made of orchid root.*)  That's Sahlep.

APPLE TEA:  It's not really tea.  It's more like they took really good apple juice.  Then they made it better apple juice.  Then they made it hot.  I bought a box of the mix to bring home with us.  It's only been two weeks.  It's gone.  All I want for Christmas is another box of Apple Tea mix.

JUICE:  Seems like this was "a thing" in Turkey when we were there--a lot of street vendors making fresh-squeezed juice.  Usually orange or pomegranate.  I found this one dude in the fish market who put three whole pomegranates in a hand-juicer for me and it made a little dixie cup's-worth but it was seriously so good.  Also, way way cheaper and better than this (plus, what a goofy name, right?).

Remember this picture?  Yeah, that's some ayran right there.

AYRAN:  It's like plain yogurt.  But sourer.  And watery.  It makes a magnificant milk moustache if you're in the market for one.  Also, probably a very good probiotic.  I'm glad I tried it, dag nabbit.  But that doesn't mean I'll buy another giant cup of it for fun anytime soon.  Give me sahlep or give me...not ayran.

Now imma gonna tell you about some foods.

SIMIT:  You may have noticed that first picture above.  That bagel-like dream is called a simit.  It's really good bread dipped in grape molasses (not as sweet as you'd think) and then rolled in sesame seeds.  We ate one of these for lunch every day.  Also, one costs you 20 cents.  Best part?  The dudes that walk around town with giant piles of these on boards balanced on their heads.

Simit-Balancers of the World, I salute you.

Hungry?  Grab a meze!

MEZES:  Turkey takes their appetizers seriously. And those appetizers are called Mezes.  You can get cold mezes or hot mezes.  I more or less went for the cold ones and would try their mixed plates when we went out to dinner.  This resaurant had tomatoes, cucumbers, an herbed yogurt, potato salad thing, eggplant/tomato, tomato/garlic, hummus, and stuffed grape leaves.  And pita.  And bread.

Everyone had the same bread and it was unbelievable.  It was the best bread I've ever had in my life.  I want to know where the giant bakery is that makes this same bread for everybody in Istanbul every day.  Find it for me, and I will reward you with mezes.

DONER:  Now, someone is going to call foul on this, but people, the Doner in Germany are actually way better than the Doner in Turkey.  I know!  I know!  Throw the tomatoes if you like, but it's true.

Come to Germany for Doner and I will show you the gates of heaven.   Go to Turkey for Doner, and I will show you a pretty good gyro wrapped in something that very closely resembles a flour tortilla.

For the uninitiated, Doner is actually the word describing how the meat is cooked.  It's a giant mass of a vertically rotating rotiserrie of (usually) lamb meat.  When you ask for a doner kebab, the shop owner takes this sword, slices off a few strips from the edges of the Doner meat mass, and wraps it all up for you with some vegetables and sauce.  It's always going to be good (I just know about the gates of heaven and all...so...I'm spoiled).

TURKISH DELIGHT:  Already talked about this here.  I still taste flowers in my mouth when I think about it.  Bleeeeelelelele.  I'm going to go brush my teeth.

KOKOREÇ:  Say it with me now-- Ko-Ko-Retch!   Very much like cockroach, if you ask me.   But it's totally not cockroaches!  It's way better.

Sheep intestines!

The culmination of my Turkey Food Philosophy achievement.  We went to the McDonalds of Kokoreç over in the New District and ordered me up a 1/4 portion of a sheep intestine sandwich (Paul was having none of it...he thought).  The proprietors of KokoDonalds were very nice--even taking a picture of us at one of their tables.

I liked them.  And their intestines.  You couldn't even really tell they were intestines anyway (which was only slightly disappointing).  It looked more like a squigglier version of ground beef.  And it was very spicy.  After Paul saw me chowing down on that sandwich he totally asked for a bite (win! adventure win!).  And, we both thought it was pretty good.  And who else reading this blog has had fast food sheep intestine?  Not many, I'll wager.  You should really try it. 

You should really try all local foods actually.  You get some ayran every once and a while, but usually it's a sahlep or a simit--and there's nothing much better than that.



* So apparently Turkey doesn't export Sahlep anymore because they were killing off too many orchids in production and the species was going extinct.  So, unless you're in the black market, you can only have sahlep in the winter in Turkey.  That's as good a reason to go as any!