I recently went on a two-week trip to Istanbul, I’ve never been there before, and decided to share with you my first impressions, as well as some of the food places I liked.
I stayed in Pera district in a very lovely flat in Deniz Apartments, somewhere near the place pictured above.
I was working a big chunk of my time there, but still had a chance to visit and walk a lot. At some point a street dog bit me on my leg, the bite was quite bad, the dog didn’t have a mark on his ear so I had to get a rabies shot. Since I had this experience, may as well share how it went: it was incredibly difficult to find a place that would vaccinate non-Turkish citizens and also extremely challenging to find someone who would speak English. I did use google translate a lot, but it took me almost two full days until I found the hospital (on the Asian side) to vaccinate me. Vaccination was free and I got a detailed document that was useful to continue the course when I returned back to Georgia.
On my journey of looking for the hospital, the most fun thing was taking a ferry to the Asian side - Harem-Sirkeci [https://goo.gl/maps/c9vbfQhHKoq4885r8 ]which was extremely cheap, something around a dollar and really not used by the tourists which was surprising as the experience was amazing.
Now let’s talk food: at first, I thought it would be difficult to find vegetarian food in Turkish cuisine, but it turned out I was not aware of quite a range of dishes, very tasty ones, that you can try.
Let’s start with Kuru fasulye, it’s a bean dish served with rice.
It can be spicy as well if you want to. The place I tried and liked it the best was called Erzincanlı Ali Baba right next to the amazing Suleymaniye Mosque.
Then, basically, any Turkish restaurant has veggie soups, heartwarming warm ones or cold ones with very yummy breads.
Cig kofte is this AMAZING vegan wrap made of fine bulgur wheat (btw there is a meat version too, but in most cases, in Istanbul you’ll find the vegan one). The best ones, I find, are at the places that only makes cig kofte. The one pictured below I found in my district, was served with lemon, it’s extremely cheap as well. Don’t miss this one, make sure to try it.
Let’s talk about sweets now. I don’t need to recommend lokum and baklava, etc, I am sure you will do it anyways, and also they are too sweet for me, so I didn’t try much, but there are a number of sweets and desserts I really liked.
First was Künefe, it’s made of cheese and a crispy, buttery pastry, as well as pistachios.
This one on the photo is a little bit burned but didn’t take photo other times. It’s not super sweet, it has this slightly salty taste from cheese too and an amazing aroma from pistachios, really nice and quite filling too.
Sutlac - a kind of a rice pudding sometimes topped with roasted hazelnuts, great snack and best ones I had was at the small diner places where traditional Turkish food is served.
Below are a few other sweets that I tried and liked and perfect with tea or Turkish coffee.
What is nice about Istanbul is that apart from Turkish cuisine you can find quite a range of other cuisines, and also restaurants that are very good at what they are making. For example there is this Iranian place called Reyhun Iranian Restaurant - target=_blank target=_blank target=_blank target=_blankhttps://goo.gl/maps/uWpCqWEAk4rYLdvX8
Unfortunately, they don’t have that many veggie options, but whatever I tried was really amazing.
You can also find great Lebanese restaurants for hummus and falafel.
Needless to say, you have to try some of the street snacks: roasted chestnuts, boiled or roasted corn, and SIMIT, simit I think is my favourite Turkish snack ever, I am sad there are no good simits made in Tbilisi. But I kept eating it every day during my two weeks of stay in Istanbul.
I am sure you won’t need my recommendation to explore Istanbul’s amazing mosques, beautiful streets, colorful markets, but here are a few more photos to motivate you.
P.S all photos are mine, taken mostly by Leica typ 109 or my phone.