This is the seventh post in a new series based on the Middle East trip completed in May and early June. The first posts in the series covered breakfasts, lunches and dinners in Jordan, sweets, pickles and olives, lunches and dinners in Jerusalem, and street food.
This time I want to look at lunches and dinners in Istanbul, which was our last stop before the stopover in Abu Dhabi on the homeward leg. Our hotel was called the Sebnem Hotel and it was located on the peninsula south of the Golden Horn near a major tourist street named Akbiyir Street. This street is lined with restaurants and convenience stores. There is also a currency exchange office there that tourists can use to get Turkish lira to use in the shops.
We landed in Istanbul at the enormous airport at 4.30pm and caught a taxi to the hotel. By 6.25pm we were in our rooms and later we went out to Akbiyir Street to get some dinner. A man in front of a restaurant asked us if we wanted some food, so we got to talking with him. He had studied in the UK and his English was excellent so we went inside his restaurant. We ordered a seafood casserole, a mixed grill, and a plate of rice. The meal came with a complimentary dish of hummus and one of black olives, and flat bread. After we had finished our waiter brought us some apple tea. I had two beers with the meal, which altogether came to 213TL (A$53).
On day two we stopped by the hotel briefly after a morning of sightseeing then headed out along Akbiyir Street to get some food. As usual there were a lot of men touting restaurants and at 2.15pm we sat down at the Babylonian Pub Restaurant. We ordered a mixed grill, which is mainly grilled chicken, beef, and lamb. It also comes with rice and a pizza-type bread. They gave us a complimentary mezze to start which was half a kind of chilli and tomato dip and half a dip made from yoghurt. This came with pita bread. I had two Efes beers and we also ordered a small bottle of water. They gave us two baklava to finish the meal with and this was also on the house. The tab came to 237TL (A$56) which sounds cheap but for Turkey was expensive. The first photo below shows the mixed grill and the second shows the mezze that came ahead of the main course.
This time I want to look at lunches and dinners in Istanbul, which was our last stop before the stopover in Abu Dhabi on the homeward leg. Our hotel was called the Sebnem Hotel and it was located on the peninsula south of the Golden Horn near a major tourist street named Akbiyir Street. This street is lined with restaurants and convenience stores. There is also a currency exchange office there that tourists can use to get Turkish lira to use in the shops.
We landed in Istanbul at the enormous airport at 4.30pm and caught a taxi to the hotel. By 6.25pm we were in our rooms and later we went out to Akbiyir Street to get some dinner. A man in front of a restaurant asked us if we wanted some food, so we got to talking with him. He had studied in the UK and his English was excellent so we went inside his restaurant. We ordered a seafood casserole, a mixed grill, and a plate of rice. The meal came with a complimentary dish of hummus and one of black olives, and flat bread. After we had finished our waiter brought us some apple tea. I had two beers with the meal, which altogether came to 213TL (A$53).
On day two we stopped by the hotel briefly after a morning of sightseeing then headed out along Akbiyir Street to get some food. As usual there were a lot of men touting restaurants and at 2.15pm we sat down at the Babylonian Pub Restaurant. We ordered a mixed grill, which is mainly grilled chicken, beef, and lamb. It also comes with rice and a pizza-type bread. They gave us a complimentary mezze to start which was half a kind of chilli and tomato dip and half a dip made from yoghurt. This came with pita bread. I had two Efes beers and we also ordered a small bottle of water. They gave us two baklava to finish the meal with and this was also on the house. The tab came to 237TL (A$56) which sounds cheap but for Turkey was expensive. The first photo below shows the mixed grill and the second shows the mezze that came ahead of the main course.
We had a wander in the afternoon and got back to the hotel at 7.45pm then 10 minutes later sat down in a Korean restaurant on Akbiyir Street where we each ordered a bowl of wonton soup. We also ordered a salad made from tomatoes and cucumbers. The meal came with complimentary side dishes containing pickles. The tab came to 61TL (A$15).
On day three my friend went off by herself to visit a hamam (Turkish bath) and at 1.45pm I sat down to have a cheeseburger and a Coke in a restaurant on Akbiyir Street. At 2.13pm my friend came back to the hotel and then we went out to find some food for her. We headed up to Divan Yolu Street and went into a restaurant we had seen the day before where they display food in the window. This is a “lokanta”, which is a type of restaurant in Turkey that sells ready-made food or “azir yemek” that is laid out in dishes kept warm on hot ash or in a bain-marie. The word in Turkish is “lokantasi” where the “-si” at the end of the word is the suffix “-like”. The word is based on the Latin word “locandus”, which means “inn”.
The advantage of lokanta is that there are no touts out the front trying to get you to sit down. They are also a lot cheaper than the restaurants that cater mainly to tourists. This time, my friend’s meal came to 65TL (A$16). The photo below shows the crowd of people outside one of the restaurants on Divan Yolu Street in the evening after fasting has ended.
The photo below shows the window of another restaurant on the same street. This establishment is displaying food that should be first cooked before being eaten.
A lokanta displays food in its window that has already been cooked, as shown in the photo below.
We went back to the same restaurant after 8pm on day three in the city. We had three dishes with lamb, potato, eggplant, and minced beef predominating. The meal came with two types of rice, one of which was plain white rice and the other of which had been prepared with a kind of tomato sauce. We also got a Coke and an extra bottle of water (a large one), plus a bottle to drink at the table with the meal. The place was full of families breaking their fast, and we also asked the staff working there for the standard plate of salad (cucumber and tomato, grated carrot, and chopped iceberg lettuce) that the other diners were enjoying. The whole lot came to 90TL (A$23), which was very cheap.
We went back to the same restaurant after 8pm on day three in the city. We had three dishes with lamb, potato, eggplant, and minced beef predominating. The meal came with two types of rice, one of which was plain white rice and the other of which had been prepared with a kind of tomato sauce. We also got a Coke and an extra bottle of water (a large one), plus a bottle to drink at the table with the meal. The place was full of families breaking their fast, and we also asked the staff working there for the standard plate of salad (cucumber and tomato, grated carrot, and chopped iceberg lettuce) that the other diners were enjoying. The whole lot came to 90TL (A$23), which was very cheap.
On day four after visiting the Istanbul Archaeological Museum we stopped at a nearby restaurant at 4.10pm. I ordered an Efes beer and we also ordered eggplant kebab and some pomegranate juice. The meal came with mezze and bread. The dip was made from black olives. The tab came to just 103TL (A$26) but the meal took ages to arrive. The waiter kept putting us off, telling us that eggplant takes a long time to prepare, but we sat there for almost an hour before getting up and paying.
When we arrived back at our hotel after visiting another part of the city, we rested for a while then went out to the Korean restaurant near it, arriving there at about 8.40pm. We ordered kim chee soup, beef with chillies, and mixed veges. I also had a beer. The meal came with complimentary pickles and we also had two bowls of rice. The tab came to 156TL (A$39) and then we returned to the hotel.
On day five at 5.08pm we got in an empty cab that appeared out of the heavy afternoon traffic outside the Dolmabahce Palace, where we had been sightseeing. The driver took us to Mesrutiyet Street and at 5.20pm, on a nearby street, we sat down in a lokanta after ordering food at the front of the shop. We had eggplant stuffed with minced beef, green beans, and sardines with rice. I had a Coke and the tab came to 52TL (A$15), which was cheap.
We got back to Hagia Sophia at 9.10pm and then walked to Akbiyir Street and sat down in a restaurant on the corner of the street where the hotel was located. The meal we ordered was simple. It comprised a rocket salad (which turned out to have no rocket in it but plenty of tomato), an Adana kebab, and some water. This restaurant served no alcohol. The staff also brought us a complimentary mezze which was a spicy vege dip that came with flat bread. The tab came to 72TL (A$18) and I left some change in the envelope when we left the premises.
On day six at 2.30pm we queued at the entrance to the Balkan Lokantasi Restaurant in Serkeci to order some food, which we did at the front of the shop. We chose eggplant stuffed with rice, a spinach dish, Brussels sprouts, and chicken cooked with potato and carrot. It came with two dishes of rice. We also bought a Coke and a bottle of water. The tab was 41.5TL (A$11), which was very cheap.
At 7.40pm we sat down at a restaurant and ordered a sejuk pide (a kind of Turkish pizza made with spicy sausage), a mix kebab, and two glasses of red wine. I also had a beer, and the tab came to 195TL. The wine came in enormous balloons and was quite good. We got back to the hotel at 8.35pm.
On day seven we went into a restaurant on Divan Yolu Street for lunch and it cost 110TL (A$28). We finished eating at 12.35pm. We saw the dervishes that evening then again had dinner in the Sultanahmet area.
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