Turkish food: what you will eat on the road
Turkish food is one of the great cuisines and one of the least understood abroad, where it is reduced to a late-night kebab. On our route you eat your way across four regions in two weeks. Here is what to look for in each.
Breakfast (kahvalti)
Not a meal so much as a table: white cheese, olives, tomatoes, cucumber, honey, clotted cream (kaymak), jams, eggs with sucuk sausage, simit bread rings, borek pastry, and tea in tulip glasses, refilled endlessly. Every hotel breakfast on the tour is a version of this. Pace yourself; lunch is coming.
Istanbul
Street food city. Balik ekmek (grilled fish in bread) on the Eminonu waterfront, simit from the carts, kokorec if you are brave, roasted chestnuts in autumn. Sit-down: the Ottoman palace dishes - lamb with aubergine puree (hunkar begendi), stuffed vegetables (dolma) - and the meyhane evening of mezes and raki, which is what the optional tavern night on day 1 is. Finish at a baklava shop in Karakoy.
The Aegean (Canakkale, Selcuk, Kusadasi)
Olive oil country. Vegetables cooked in oil and served cold (zeytinyagli), wild greens, artichokes in spring, sea bass and bream, and a lighter hand with spice. Canakkale is known for its tomato dishes and its peynir helvasi cheese dessert; Selcuk for cop sis, tiny lamb skewers eaten by the dozen.
The coast and the gulet
Fish, obviously - see the Fethiye fish market - and on the boat the cook's mezes, salads, grilled fish and meat, fruit, and whatever the fishermen sell alongside. Kas has excellent small restaurants in the old town. Ice cream from Maras, stretchy and cut with a knife, from the boats that come round the bays.
Pamukkale and Cappadocia
Inland is bread and meat. Testi kebab in Cappadocia, lamb and vegetables sealed in a clay pot and broken open at the table; manti, tiny meat dumplings under yoghurt and paprika butter; gozleme, flatbread filled with cheese or spinach, cooked on a domed griddle by a woman who has done it for forty years; Cappadocian wines from the Emir and Kalecik Karasi grapes (see Turkish wines). Pamukkale's local dish is the tandir, slow-roasted lamb.
Kebab, properly
The word just means grilled meat. Adana (spicy minced lamb on a flat skewer), Urfa (the same, not spicy), sis (cubes), Iskender from Bursa (doner over bread with tomato sauce and browned butter), and the Cappadocian testi above. The doner you know is the least interesting member of the family.
Sweet
Baklava (pistachio from Gaziantep is the benchmark), kunefe (shredded pastry over hot cheese), sutlac (rice pudding), lokum (Turkish delight) and in summer, a plate of melon and white cheese. Turkish coffee after, thick and unfiltered; do not drink the last centimetre.
Dietary needs
Vegetarians eat extremely well here - the meze and olive-oil dishes alone could carry you; vegans are fine with a little care about yoghurt and butter; gluten-free is harder but manageable. Tell us when you book and we tell the hotels, the guide and the gulet cook.
