Our day starts with a trip to the bakery for the still warm, crusty on-the-outside, white and fluffy on-the-inside Turkish bread, and maybe some lighter-than-air croissants. We prepare a typical Turkish breakfast with the bread: sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, wrinkly and salty black olives (which are incredibly cheap here), tangy feta (which tastes 100x better than any I have had in the U.S.), and repeated drizzles of the super olivey EVOO. We might also have a little butter and honey with our bread or some fruit and yogurt to top it off.
The options for a Turkish lunch are many, and on Monday we ducked into a busy Circassian restaurant and were pleasantly surprised with a range of mezes (starters) and lamb dumplings/raviolis in a yogurt and chili sauce. They vary by region, but the mezes range from a bowl of big yellow beans to fresh grilled mackerel fillets, to eggplant puree (like the Greek baba ganoush), to chopped spinach salad, or my favorite: a spread made of grilled red peppers, toasted walnuts and pomegranate syrup.
The Turkish are big meat eaters and the national fast food dish is probably the kebap, which city dwellers in the U.S. know so well for late night gnoshing. There are also kofte restaurants which specialize in meatballs, borek shops which carry all kinds of savory pastry wrapped, delicately spiced meats, cheeses and vegetables, shops specializing in baklava (which is a whole different creation over here), pide restaurants (Turkish version of pizza), and of course, fish restaurants as Istanbul is a seaside city. We have also been enjoying fresh pomegranate juice from the tiny juice shops - 5 whole pomegranates in a small glass. Hello anti-oxidants!
I will try to take more photos of our food. We are just so excited, we lay into it right away and ruin the aesthetic!
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