My own quintessential keyif experience happened some years ago. My friends and I were working our way through a glorious array of mezes and several bottles of raki when suddenly a rug merchant named Hasan began to sing. As his voice rose and fell along the complex scales of Turkish classical music, a hush settled over the room. When he finished, the laughter and clinking of glasses resumed, fish was ordered, more raki was poured. Before long, the next table—an amateur singing club out on the town—broke into song. When they were done, a man at another table piped up, and so it went the entire evening. We heard the shutters go down at the restaurants next door, but no one was willing to break the spell. Even the waiters stood entranced until two in the morning, when we spilled out into the deserted street. There’s a Turkish saying that goes, “What the heart wants is intimate conversation, the rest is an excuse.”
Fish restaurants tend to be more sedate than meyhaneler, although there’s no rule against spontaneous singing. Ismet Baba is an airy shack perilously suspended above the water next to the ferry landing in the charming Asian village of Kuzguncuk, a famously tolerant neighborhood that’s home to artists and writers. Enormous windows give diners a view of the Bosporus Bridge and a parade of cargo ships, ferries, and fishing boats. There is no menu; the fish available that day and their prices are listed on a blackboard. Among the best are barbunya, red mullet flash-fried in cornmeal, and simple, grilled kalkan (turbot). The restaurant is always full, so come early in the evening and bring cash to pay your bill.
Fish rarely appear on the menus of so-called “meat restaurants,” which don’t lend themselves to song, but rather to conversation and serious eating. These places tend to specialize in kebab, a cuisine from eastern Anatolia, the skewered chunks of lamb rotating over a glowing charcoal fire that evokes the Central Asian nomadic heritage of the Turks. A few meat restaurants serve beer, but the traditional accompaniment is ayran, a refreshing, lightly salted yogurt drink.
The Develi family from eastern Antep province has been in the kebab business since 1912. There are now several Develi restaurants in the city, but since a good view is an important ingredient of Istanbul eating, I recommend the one situated inside the Kalamı¸s yacht harbor, on the Asian side, near a seaside strolling path shaded by oleanders. Among the appetizers, a favorite is ali nazik, a smoky eggplant purée swirled with yogurt and topped with succulent lamb cooked in butter. You must also try the restaurant’s famed version of çi˘g köfte—spiced raw beef ground to a paste with bulgur, parsley, and Maras and Urfa peppers, then shaped into patties decorated with the imprint of the cook’s fingertips and served in a crisp leaf of romaine lettuce with a squeeze of lemon juice. The kuzu tandır, tender lamb cooked in a sealed clay jar, is also excellent, as is the fıstıklı köfte, grilled meatballs of lamb ground with pistachios. Kebabs come with a mound of arugula leaves, parsley, grilled long green peppers, and a juicy grilled tomato, and waiters circulate continuously with trays of delicacies newly hatched from the oven—tiny pizzas, stuffed eggplants, and balls of spicy ground lamb and walnuts.
Alcohol is not usually served in lokantalar, old-school restaurants that specialize in the sort of food mothers laboriously make at home in sturdy pots and casseroles: soups, stewed lamb, rice-stuffed squash, vegetable casseroles. Thirty years ago, lokantalar were the workingman’s kitchen away from home, located in the poorer parts of town. On a winter morning, behind steamed-up windows, you could make out men spooning up their breakfast soup or, in the wee hours, downing tripe soup to conquer their impending hangovers. Recently, “home-cooking” lokantalar have spread, in part to serve the tourist trade, but also because more and more Turks are eating out instead of making the time-consuming dishes at home.
Pinterest
