Istanbul overload
Exactly a week after I got home, I met a friend for lunch who said her 20-something son had suffered terrible food in Istanbul and been harassed the whole time. Where did he stay? Near the Blue Mosque and the other ancient attractions. Thank allah the workshop my consort was teaching had lodged him over the Galata Bridge, in Beyoglu, in a business/boutique hotel, the Richmond, where everyone had warned we would be so isolated. Let’s start with the huge breakfast buffet: Eggs and potatoes and toast for timid travelers plus the real local deal, too: half a dozen kinds of cheese, meats (anything but pork), cucumbers and tomatoes, olives, jams and honeys, yogurts and fresh and cooked fruits. The best part: a Nescafe machine that turned out perfect coffee on all but one morning, when it needed its white balance adjusted. The second-best part: the view, over city and water.
But this was location, location: We were right at the funicular end of Istiklal Cadessi, the main boulevard in that district, with shops and restaurants directly on it and alleys lined with endless sidewalk cafes branching off it. Down the center, the “nostalgia tram” ran, loaded with passengers in daylight but towing a music car at night (usually with some band blasting “Ride, Sally, Ride”).
All my meals fascinated me, but the worst transpired where we also had one of our best: Refik, right near the hotel. Bob and I stumbled in on Saturday at lunchtime when it wasn’t open and they said we could have any of the mezes in the display case, but after we’d decided on three they decided we could have fish, too. So we tasted our way around bland eggplant puree, intense roasted eggplant with tomatoes, onions and peppers, plus strong anchovies rolled around olives, all with grilled bread, and then split the good fried red mullet and the swordfish kebabs with bay leaves and charred lemon. It was expensive (70TL?), but the hospitality (and jazzy WC) lured me back a couple of nights later on my own. What a difference a lack of consort makes. The same waiter/manager could not have been more dismissive; a couple who came in after me got a better table, faster water/raki (with ice, no less) and a display of mezes to choose from. I picked from the menu, and the bread in the basket for my broad bean purée was all heels. Ungrilled.
Also disappointing was the wildly recommended Ozkonak in Cinagir, what Bob described as the SoHo of Istanbul. But I have only myself to blame; it’s an old-line place where you go to the steam table and choose what you want, and I was hot, fried and confused and pointed at stuffed zucchini and then braised artichoke hearts, since I’d seen them being tidily trimmed in the markets. Suffice it to say that this is too often what you get when you order Turkish in NYC. All the staff, though, could not have been nicer.
Heeding Istanbul Eats, I made my way to sleek-and-modern Antiochia another night, and what I’ll remember as much as the food was how mellow the waiter was as a hammering rainstorm set in after most of us patrons had chosen sidewalk tables. He just kept calmly and methodically dragging out umbrellas and adjusting them, so while the American woman with a book seated next to me fled inside, I could stay and share my beef kebabs with a very charming cat who politely stood up to tap me on my elbow to beg for more. An outstanding walnut-tomato-pomegranate spread, though, was the best part of my dinner.
Just as good were the two very spicy mezes, one with peppers and walnuts and the other with peppers and tomatoes, at Sofyali, a few barfronts down from Kefit Fail. The waiter’s hand kind of shook “are you sure?” as he transferred the small trays to our table, but we are salsa-conditioned. Three of us also split a grilled sea bass that was fine until the local fixer who had stopped by our table noted that cheaper fish prices on a menu indicated farmed V wild. As I always say, you are what you eat really makes a difference with the chicken of the sea; it tastes like the grain it’s fed. Funnier still was the special salad of the day, which turned out to be arugula, tomatoes and grated cheese plus . . . corn. Houlihan’s, Istanbul-style.
And I thought the cuisine was settling into the coherence the night three cabs’ worth of us headed to the ferry to Uskudar, on the Asian side, for dinner at Ismet Baba, right on the Bosphorus. The food unloaded onto our table, chosen by the fixer, looked familiar: melon and white cheese; smoked/cured fish with slices of raw onion; eggplant purée; roasted eggplant with tomatoes and hot peppers; sea beans with garlic; yogurt with scallions; fried calamari with ricotta-like cheese for dipping; famous fried liver; slices of a phyllo roll filled with potatoes and dill. The main course was swordfish as we’d had it at Refik, with the addition of grilled tomatoes, and dessert was a huge array of fruit with helveh. It seemed like a classic meal.
But then one of the founders of Istanbul Eats took me to lunch in a Kurdish market and I realized I knew nothing. Here we shared chunks of lamb hacked off a whole animal that had been roasted in a charcoal pit; the bits were mounded over a flatbread that soaked up the amazing fat. Lamb sickens me, but I was actually bummed he ordered only a half-portion; I could have eaten double. To accommodate me, he also had chosen chicken and rice in a pastry crust with currants and almonds and steamed patties with kibbeh inside that were equally dazzling. I also got to experience the salty yogurt drink ayran the right, messy way, from a huge copper mug with a ladle.
Given how good that meal was, I took his and his co-blogger’s advice on their site about Zubeyrir, which was the perfect ending. Bob and I sat alongside the charcoal grill and took so many photos of our food the chef insisted on taking one of us. For some reason, the headwaiter insisted I taste everything we chose from the meze tray before he turned it over to us for good, but the gigante beans were as good as the yogurt-cucumber-tomato-spread and warm eggplant purée and spinach with garlic; the regular flatbread was excellent, too, but then he brought a sort of Turkish tortilla, baked with herbs, crackly and crunchy. I had a hard time ceding most of the grilled lamb ribs with their amazing fat and a spicy mixed-mince kebab that came with a fascinating parsley-onion salad dusted with sumac. All that went well with a good bottle of Kavaklidere red. And I would have felt bad that we were just hitting our eating stride, but we had one last breakfast to look forward to. . .
Ozkonak, Akarsu Caddesi No. 60, Cihangir
Sofyali, Sofyali Sofak No. 9, Beyoglu
Siirt Seref Buryan Kebap Salonu, Itfaiye Cadessi No. 4, Fatih, serefburyan.com
Antiochia, Minare Sokak, Asmalimesict, antiochiaconcept.com
Ismet Baba, Carsi Caddesi No. 1, ismetbaba.com.tr
Zubeyrir Ocakbasi, Istiklal Caddesi Bekar Sokak No. 28, zubeyirocakbasi.com