Istanbul in the ‘burbs

Through the uber app I grabbed a yellow cab for my trip to the starting point of a food tour. My yellow cab driver was a nice guy who smokes whilst driving, something I hadn’t struck before. 

He dropped me at the Carrefours Supermarket as per the address I had given him (from the tour company). When I got there it didn’t seem like a spot that a tour would start from so I showed the address to the man stacking the onions who told me I was in the wrong place I should go ‘over there’ as he waves his hand. So I use maps.com to direct me to the other Carrefours and off I set. In the meantime I rang Esin, the tour guide, to tell her I may be late and why. Lucky I am the only person on the tour so she can wait. 

I walked for a couple of k asking people along the way for directions to Carrefours and it wasn’t till I realised that they were sending me on a wild goosechase that I rang Esin again. 

A lovely lady in a swanky hotel helped me order another cab to take me to the correct address and once in the cab the driver spoke to Esin. 

10 minutes later I was back in exactly the same spot where I was dropped of by the first cabbie. Bugger the onion man. He told me bs and now I am very late and exhausted before the day started. 

The tour started with breakfast at an old sports club first established by greeks. We ate outside at a table set with Tea, cheeses, fresh tomatoes, baby cucumber, cured meat, fresh simit, grape juice/tahini spread, capsicum spread (adjika), crystalised pumpkin w tahini. It was fabulous with the grape juice/tahini spread blowing my tiny wee mind. Sweet, yet savoury, I couldn’t get enough. Then came the pumpkin in the form of cubes with a crisp exterior and soft unctuous interior oozing as I bit into it. A special addition to breakfast from my hosts mother. It was divine. I was ready to burst and that was only breakfast. 

Tums full we did a quick tour of the building and learned of its greek based history but marveled at the biggest wooden ceiling for a sports club. Quite magnificent. 

Esin knows all of the store keepers in this  neighbourhood so not only were we trying the local foods but we met all the vendors in her old neighbourhood too. She was introducing me to everyone and they each made me feel as though I belonged. 

The Simit we had for breakfast was from a shop we later visited. Thousands of simit cooked strung together and batched then delivered to the street vendors around the city. Today’s simit was what I was looking for and meant that I could tick off my mission list. Crunchy on the sesame coated outside and light and fluffy inside. Delicious. 

Every food vendor gave me a little something to try:A plumy thing - looked like an apricot, sweet as and oozing with juice. A slice of gyros (meat spiced and layered on a vertical spit, then sliced thinly and placed in a wrap with veg and sauces). A salma - vine leaf wrapped around a mince/rice mix (often incorrectly called a dolma - dolma means stuffed - salma means wrapped). Dondurma (ice cream) 

Like everywhere the flower shops from afar smelled strongly of flowers. Obviously the blooms are not so overbred here so as to lose their smells like many of your flowers do at home. Despite the smells giving me hay fever it is lovely to pass by the shops and get a whiff. 
A quick stop at a watch repairer was fun. His tiny little shop was full of clocks, some dating back hundreds of years. It was quite scary thinking that the big hand would soon be on the 12 and hundreds of clocks would begin to chime. We made it out in time. 

We visited a farmers market where the smell of the fresh fruit filled the air. Everything was glistening with freshness and I remember thinking I wish we had this at home.  

We watched the guys peeling Artichokes, sometimes hundreds each day. The outer leaves get ditched and given to the animals, the choke is removed and all that is left is a small bowl like flesh. 

Moving on we stop to taste some more goodies after watching the women make lavosh bread and with a deft hand get it into the tandoor like oven. 

In the restaurant we sampled the bread spread with local hand churned butter and comb honey!  Oh so good. There was also some cheeses, shakshuka and a small salad to whet our appetite but the butter and honey were hard to beat. All the produce in this shop was produced by the owners on their property. They close the restaurant for a few months and go to their village, make all the produce from their own animals (bees, dairy etc) and bring it back to the restaurant. 

A stop for an obligatory Turkish Coffee ended after we went inside to see the inside of the store and met some ladies doing ceramics.  One was a sculptor and we told her the story of my sculpture. It’s a small world indeed as we discovered when she told us that she knew the sculptor of the piece I wanted. How weird is that. I have now made contact with the shop which is in the Grand Bazaar where I went the other day. 

It was very hot and the heat was getting to me so we missed off a couple of visits and went straight to the meze shop. Here they offered many different traditional simple cooked foods and spreads. I was full but had to try the artichoke. Then I saw the kibbe so that was also a starter. 

With a cold glass of wine and some bread to dunk I was a happy girl. The artichokes boiled to al dente then soused in oil, seasoning and fresh dill. Absolutely delicious, nothing like the artichoke tragedy my Mom used to put in front of me. These were outstanding as was the kibbe. 

I was exhausted and happy when Esin got me to the train station and sent me on my way. It has been another great day and I feel like I have made another friend. Esin has asked me to come stay with her next year. We had a great time together. I hope I am a bit of an inspiration to Esin and to Ani in Georgia in that I am ‘old’ (older than their mothers), single and living my best life. They both said as much. 

Gosh it seems like I just finished lunch but its now 8:30pm and although I am not really hungry I need to eat something light before morning. So here I am at Izmir Isi, the other joint in this street that does kokoreç, the lamb entrails on a spit and am waiting for my order. 

A brisk walk afterwards helped me digest my delicious dinner and as I walked I noticed a long queue of people waiting for fish wraps. There are heaps of stalls selling the same thing but this particular one uses Trip Advisor and Insta to advertise and it obviously works. Thanks to Esin I have crossed the fish sandwich mission off my list. She filled me in on the fish which is sold as something else but actually mackerel from Norway. Doesn’t seem quite the same. 

My mission for somewhere to possibly stay when I come back did not succeed but the area I am staying in is so cool I could easily stay here. Touristy yes, but not like the old city and such a wide variety of eating places I could easily call this home. There are a few extra random photos of the day here: