10 Turkish Meals You Can’t Miss

 

If food is an avenue to understanding people and culture, then the Turkish table tells a story of long-ago nomadic tribes, ancient spice traders, innovative palace chefs, sheep herders, Mediterranean foragers, and Aegean fishermen. The Ottoman Empire held a strategic geographic location and absorbed a lot of culinary influences from conquered territories including the Balkans, Persia, the Middle East and Northern Africa. The extravagance of the royal Ottoman cuisine was renowned, and some of those recipes perfected in the sultan’s kitchens still remain as Türkiye’s most beloved dishes, i.e. baklava (layered pistachio pastry), karnıyarık (stuffed eggplant), and Hünkar Beğendi (Sultan’s Delight, slow-cooked lamb over eggplant puree).

 

Today, walking into Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar plunges you right into living history and floods your senses with color, scent and sound. All throughout Türkiye, you’ll be delighted by the richness of the cuisine both in flavor and variety. No matter if your tastes run to meats, sweets, adventurous offal or strictly vegetarian, you won’t go hungry here!

 

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A food tour or a cooking class is a no-brainer that can add such tremendous insight and entertainment to your trip. Learn how food traditions are keeping alive legacies built over centuries and generations whether it’s at an outdoor market, iconic coffee seller, historic tavern, neighborhood kebab shop, or a home kitchen.

 

Just to whet your appetite before your trip, here are 10 favorite food experiences in Türkiye:

 

 

Traditional Turkish Breakfast

 

While we could devote a whole blog post to Turkish breakfast, the main thing to know is that the traditional wake-up spread is meant to be shared. Particularly generous during weekends and communal events, the full Turkish breakfast is a staggering array of savory and sweet elements.

 

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It wouldn’t be right if it didn’t have simit (sesame-crusted bread rings), various white cheeses, olives, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, several kinds of jam, and thick clotted cream (kaymak) drizzled with honey. If you’re a meat eater, then you should try the sucuk, a beef sausage spiced with garlic, cumin and red pepper. At hotel buffets, and in most ‘serpme kahvalti’ menus, boiled eggs or menemen (eggs cooked with peppers and tomatoes) can be included.

 

The traditional breakfast is of course served with copious amounts of Turkish black tea (çay) in those beautiful, curved tea glasses. The word for breakfast – kahvalti – literally means ‘under coffee’, meaning the meal you eat before coffee consumption, but most places catering to Westerners will have coffee (kahve) available.

 

Be ready to let go of your notions about what breakfast should be, and just have fun with sampling different breakfast dishes throughout your stay in Türkiye!

 

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Turkish Meze Night

 

Whether you go to a nice seafood restaurant or a meyhane (a typical tavern), the main event isn’t so much the fish as it is the meze, small plates meant to be shared. Similar to the Turkish breakfast, a meze night is a time for sharing and lingering in a convivial atmosphere. This time, the preferred drink is rakı, a grape liquor flavored with aniseed.

 

They meyhanes of Istanbul have a fascinating multicultural history. The name actually comes from the Persian for “wine house”, and during the Byzantine era the population was consuming wine from the Aegean islands or spiced wine like the Romans. During the Ottoman Empire, the meyhanes were owned by non-Muslims, like Greeks and Armenians, and located outside the city walls of Istanbul, where alcohol consumption was forbidden. That’s why meyhane culture is so strong in the Pera and Galata districts, and why you’ll hear typical Greek music and taste common Aegean flavors such as fish and herbs.

 

Today’s popular mezes include haydari (garlicky herbed yogurt dip), ezme (kind of salsa), yaprak sarma (stuffed grape leaves), borlotti beans cooked in oil, pureed fava bean dip, deniz börülcesi (samphire with garlic), fried calamari, and enough tasty eggplant appetizers to convert any eggplant haters out there! But really, the Turks know how to smoke and fry an eggplant into something incredible.

 

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Simple Fish Sandwich

 

One of Istanbul’s signature street foods is balik ekmek (‘fish bread’) enjoyed by the Bosphorus coast. There’s nothing fancy about this sandwich, just a fillet of grilled fresh-caught fish (typically mackerel) tucked into plain white baguette bread and topped with onions, lettuce and a squeeze of lemon juice. A condiment of spicy pickled peppers or a drink of fermented purple carrot juice (şalgam) adds a bit more flavor.

 

You’ll find vendors flipping fish along the banks of the Golden Horn, an inlet of the Bosphorus where Istanbul’s historic center is concentrated, particularly in the Eminönü and Karaköy neighborhoods.

 

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Turkish Lentil Soup

 

From a simple fish sandwich, we go to an unassuming legume soup. Meet Türkiye’s ultimate comfort food, mercimek çorbası (lentil soup), a creamy blend of red lentils, rich tomato or pepper paste and aromatics. Eat it with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes and a squeeze of fresh lemon for the classic presentation. Filling and healthy, you can have it as a starter or a full meal. Honestly, you’ll be surprised how good a bowl of lentil soup can be!

 

In Türkiye, you’re never too far from a bowl of lentil soup. You can find it wherever they serve meats, like a kebapçı or ocakbaşı (grill restaurant) or at a lokanta, a no-frills establishment that serves up home-cooked dishes cafeteria-style. Another tip: ezogelin is just another variation of lentil soup with the addition of bulgur.

 

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Turkish Flatbreads

 

An excellent accompaniment to lentil soup, flatbreads are an integral part of Turkish cuisine. First there’s pide, a boat-shaped ‘pizza’ topped with different cheeses and meat, or even a gooey egg. The pide you see today was also served by the Ottomans.

 

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In the central region of Konya, known for mutton dishes, etli ekmek (a very long and thin flatbread topped with minced meat) reigns supreme. Were the Turkic tribes of central Anatolia rolling up these portable flatbreads long ago?

 

More widespread and popular is lahmacun, wafer-thin rounds topped with minced meat, garlic and spices and crisped in a pizza oven. Add greens or a squeeze of lemon, then roll up and eat with your hands. Lahmacun comes from the country’s southeast, by way of Syria. The different variations of flatbreads illustrate the rich culinary influences Türkiye enjoys.

 

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Kebap & Köfte: Roasted Meat and Meatballs

 

Meat lovers rejoice, and vegans stick around, there’s something here for you too. It seems like a toss-up between kebap and köfte for the national dish of Türkiye. Throughout the country, each area has its own recipes varying in spice blend, sauce, shape and preparation.

 

Kebap dishes are most often made with lamb, also chicken, and feature a lot of spit-roasting and skewering. Köfte are usually prepared with minced beef, but also red lentils and bulgur wheat, and shaped into small patties or balls. Particularly when eating in southeastern cities like Gaziantep and Hatay, just be aware that the oils can be hard on sensitive stomachs.

 

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If you’re vegan, then you’ve got to try lentil balls (mercimek köftesi) loaded with herbs. Just like mom’s meatballs, the best lentil balls you’ll find will be made at someone’s home. Çiğ köfte is another surprising veggie option. The traditional recipe uses raw meat kneaded for at least an hour, but the ubiquitous mass-production shops are banned from using raw meat, so instead they make a naturally vegan version with fine bulgur. We must give a mention to white bean salad (piyaz) as well – it’s the perfect vegetarian-friendly side to your köfte meal.

 

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Baklava

 

The sweetest way to end your meal, Türkiye’s most iconic dessert is a sticky, flaky confection with layers of paper-thin dough (yufka, or filo in some circles) and nuts drenched in syrup. A hotly contested pastry, historians have differing evidence attributing baklava to the Greeks, Turks or Persians. We do know that it was a favorite in the Topkapı Palace, and Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent used to send huge trays to his janissaries, the elite Ottoman army, during the holy month of Ramadan.

 

Baklava actually comes in many varieties whether milky or dry, pistachio or walnut, round or square. But you should always have it with a glass of tea. You can also try baklava’s cousin künefe, a unique pastry made with shredded yufka strips, filled with cheese, and soaked in sticky syrup.

 

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Börek: Flaky Pastry

 

You could think of börek like the savory version of baklava. For the most common version, delicate sheets of yufka are prepped with an egg wash and layered with variations of cheese, spiced meat, spinach and potato. Börek is common across the Balkans. Mostly it’s savory, but there’s a popular Kurdish variety that comes with powdered sugar you can sprinkle to your taste.

 

Eat börek at a specialty shop (börekçisi) where golden, flaky coils are cleavered, weighed to the portion and piled onto your plate.

 

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Gözleme: Turkish Pancakes

 

Following in the tradition of delicate stuffed doughs, gözleme makes the perfect snack any time of day. Before fillings are added, a thin layer of batter is expertly poured out on a hot oiled griddle - this is where the ‘pancake’ reference comes from, although the end result is worlds away from a stack of fluffy flapjacks. Gözleme are more similar to French crepes, and they should always be eaten hot and made to order. Cheese, potato and spinach are classic options.

 

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Nohutlu Pilav: Rice with Chickpeas

 

We’ve gone on and on about doughs and yufka here, but rice, or pilav, is another important Turkish staple. One of the quickest meals you can get is nohutlu pilav, a filling combination of boiled white rice and chickpeas, optionally served with a topping of shredded chicken. You can season it with black pepper, spicy ketchup or pickled peppers, and you’ll probably need some ayran to wash it down.

 

This rice dish is often sold from street carts or simple shops that cater to hungry workmen and students. Affordable, easy to find, quick, and great with ketchup – the original fast food.

 

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The next time you think of Turkish food, maybe it won’t just be kebab and baklava that springs to mind. This overview by no means covers all the dishes you’ll encounter in Türkiye – Turkish dumplings (mantı), white bean stew (kuru fasulye), spit-roasted sheep’s intestine (kokoreç), bulgur wheat salad (kısır) – there’s so much more!

 

If you’d like to experience all the flavors and history of Türkiye with our excellent local guides, please contact us to start planning your perfect vacation.