We've been to Istanbul many times so the famous tourist spots have little to offer us. Erdogan's love-hate relationship with the economics of tourism provided the backdrop to a steep rise in entry fees to museums and historical sites. The Agha Sofia Mosque - an absolute must see - now charges over EURO 25, and non-Turks are allowed only through a special entrance to one of the balcony areas - where some of the magnificent Byzantine images by are hidden by curtains. The Kariye /Chora Museum now charges EURO 20, the Galata Tower charges EURO 30. But we didn't come to Istanbul for the Museums this time. We came for the food, and a lot of the best is found in residential zones outside of the tourist districts.
Kadiköy Market
Kadiköy is on the Asian side of the Bosporus straits, and visitors usually reach it by ferry from Eminönu station across the water. With the newly opened Marmaray train service you can now get there directly by taking a modern subway underneath the Bosporus - a feat of engineering that counts as one of the modern world's technological marvels at least until the next big earthquake hits the Aegean fault, which runs directly beneath it. But, as they say in Turkey.. Mashallah... if God wills it. For the moment, God willed us to get to Kadiköy cheaply and quickly, so He held back on the quakes for the afternoon. We booked into the aptly named Duck Hotel in the fashionable Moda district of Kadiköy. After the spacious five star Ramada in Bakirköy the Duck was a bit downscale (read: cheap) and cramped, but we did have a roof terrace. Lesson learned: never choose accommodations based simply on animal names!
Kadiköy is the nightlife and market district for the Asian side of Istanbul, and has been since it was known to the ancient Greek s as Chalcedon. Compared to the working class congestion of the European side, the Anatolian bit of Istanbul is definitely upwardly mobile. Leading to the southern suburbs of Moda and Maltepe along the coast are fashionable boulevards lined with designer shops and trendy hamburger joints. Go north and you hit Usküdar, a conservative Muslim neighborhood with prime kebab grills. Continue north and the Bosporus is lined with affluent garden suburbs housing Istanbul's techno-and-media glitterati. And when these folks want to go pub hopping, they take the ferry to Kadiköy.
One advantage of our location was we were on the quaint T2 historical tram line, which runs in a circle around hilly Moda center. Another was the burek shop across the street. Cheap lodgings meant no fancy breakfast, which was fine as long as I had access to fresh meat and cheese pastries at 7 am. You find all kinds of filling: minced meat, cheese, spinach, or potato. I tend to choose su böregi "wet burek", basically a white lasagna. Kadiköy is famous for its open market, one of the largest in Istanbul, but it is equally a center for antique hunting, second hand and vintage shops, and tons of eateries which serve the crowds on weekends and evenings. We had already been to the rightly famed Çiya for regional Turkish specialties, so we tried a few new spots. first off: Fumie needs seafood.
Midye dolma - rice stuffed mussels - are a specifically Istanbul street snack. Most Turks think they are disgusting, and when a newcomer arrives into Istanbul from the Anatolian hinterlands his friends take him out and force him to try mussels as a rıte of passage. They are stuffed with a mild rice pilaf and usually affordable at around thirty cents a piece. We went big: all you can eat, the price being figured afterwards by counting the shells and dividing by half.
But the evening was young and I was still hungry. Instead of heading to our original destination - Çiya - we wound up at Tatar Salim Döner kebab, allegedly the best in Kadiköy. Döner kebab is everywhere in Turkey, all of them much, much better than anything you can imagine in your home cities where they serve to soak up drunken binges and wind up painting the asphalt after a night of partying. Most döner are the pre-made gigantic hunk of meat ordered from a central factory for kebab making, but if you search there are still old-fashioned döner masters who layers thin slices of lamb or beef on a skewer in the old traditional method.
Such is Tatar Salim, which only serves the house special döner - either with or without rice, with a fresh, flatbread lavas, salad and French fries. These guys take their spit roasted meat very seriously, and it shows. This was one of the most memorable meat dishes of my life - while Fumie was in rapture over the simple pilaf (made from bardo rice) served underneath it, leaving half of her meat for me to inhale.
We were in Turkey during the hamşi season, which we missed last visit. Hamşi are Black Sea anchovies, and they are everywhere during the cold months. Black Sea cuisine is dependent on these tiny fish for a huge variety of dishes - from hamşi pilaf to hamşi bread to hamşi stews. We had taken the ferry across the water to visit the Beşiktaş market one day and found ourselves right outside the fish market. There was no escaping it.
Hamşi tava - fried anchovies. Simply served with a squirt of lemon and a loaf of fresh bread. Don't worry about the bones - they won't bother you. Black Sea culture is obsessed with hamşi - folk dances mimic the movements of the shoals of fish, and it seems that every third or fourth song is about their favorite fish. If you ever visit Trabzon, Rize, Ordu or Samsun, try to get there for the opening of hamşi season. it is kind of like Cajun Mardi Gras, but with three string kemençe fiddles and more fish.
We were in Beşiktaş just as the local football team was about to play a match, The streets were crowded with hardcore Beşiktaş fans of all ages dressed in the black and white colors of their team, selling scarves and ribbons and getting ready for the evening game by spending the afternoon drinking beer and eating hamsi. Teenage Gypsy bands played Beşiktaş Team anthems on street corners. Fifteen years ago we went to a Beşiktaş game - when Turkish fans are happy, or even when they were not, they liked to shoot live pistol ammunition into the air which went straight up skyward, and then - unfortunately - down atop the hill above the stadium in the trendy Taksim neighborhood. People used to stay indoors and hide after games to avoid falling ammunition.
We didn't witness any such bad behavior, in fact, the crowds were the best behaved footie fans we have ever seen in Europe. But the crowds were growing and we escaped up the hill to the weekly Beşiktaş market. A huge concrete building - somebody's idea of a parking garage yard sale gone wild - was filled with stands offering vegetables, kitchen wares, fish, and dodgy blue jeans.
A woman was selling dried herbs whose smell attracted us from far across the concrete. We bought some Mediterranean wild thyme - kekik - which is somewhere between thyme and oregano, and a bag of dried spearmint - nana. We also got a bottle of nar ekisi - pomegranate molasses. Since getting home we have been making our salads Turkish style with a sprinkling of mint and a squirt of pomegranate, which lends a more sour taste with a bit of sweetness. Of all the things you can take home from Turkey, we always end up with a suitcase full of flavor.
The Rug.
Then Fumie spotted a rug. The Rug. Her eyes filled with textile love the likes of which I had never seen. Not an antique or some collectors item, but a recently made Afghanistan kilim rug for everyday use. Asking about it consisted of spending about fifteen minutes speaking in weak Turkish while fucking up the number system and writing things down on cell phones, and in the process the rug went from about $250 down to $100, which was its actual price because I heard a local woman ask about it and understood their Turkish enough to hear it priced as about $100. And then we walked away. Quandary #1: How were we going to get it home? The last time we bought a rug I hauled it on my back via trains, buses, and ferries overland to Budapest. Quandary #2: We still want it. Quandary #3: Similar Rugs are available at any normal market in Istanbul on any day of the week. They are waiting for us. And we will be back.
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