Entering Mandy Meydan, a Yemeni restaurant in Başakşehir, a middle-class neighborhood of gated communities in Istanbul, we encountered a dizzying cluster of cubicles, each holding diners seated on a carpeted floor and eating family style. Amid the din of laughter and clanging metal platters, we quietly called out for our Yemeni friend Abdo. He opened the door to our jalsa, or sitting room, and welcomed us in to rest on the floor. As we shifted around hulking pillows and colorful cushions to prepare for our feast, Abdo, always-smiling, asked us what we would like. Mandi from Hadramout, zurbian from Aden, or fahsa from Sana’a? The list went on. “Open the menu and look. It’s a culinary map of Yemen,” he said with a toothy grin.

Despite 2022 being shaped by Turkey's deep economic crisis, Istanbul's restaurant scene remained resilient amid three-digit inflation and prices that seemed to increase every other day. Nevertheless, many bars, restaurants and tavernas stayed full as people turned to food and drink to help cope. With all Covid-19 restrictions removed, the sector enjoyed its best year since 2019 after being dealt a heavy blow by the pandemic in its first two years. As always, Istanbul remains an infinitely exciting to discover and eat, and choosing the top highlights of our culinary adventures was no small feat! 

A small group of sommeliers, oenophiles, and at least one intrepid food and beverage writer are gathered outside Grape Wine Boutique in Istanbul’s Teşvikiye neighborhood. More than once does a passing car feel the need to honk as the crowd, tasting glasses in hand, spills into the narrow street from the even more narrow sidewalk. As the first cork is pulled, a nervous energy spreads among the group.  We’ve gathered to taste the first official vintage of Mesashuna Wines, the only licensed winery in Turkey’s northeastern Artvin province, a rugged region not far from the border with Georgia.

The area around Mis (meaning “Pleasant-Smelling”), Kurabiye (“Cookie”) and Süslü Saksı (“Fancy Flowerpot”) Streets is as eclectic and appealing as these monikers would suggest, at least as far as we're concerned. This corner in the backstreets of Istanbul's Beyoğlu district is home to a trifecta of our favorite local haunts: Müşterek, its sister meyhane, Meclis, and a bar on the floor above, called Marlen. It’s also an area that has maintained the gritty yet lively character of the city's longtime entertainment hub in spite of profound changes that have threatened to strip it of that title.

If there is one thing that we learned throughout our time in Diyarbakir, it is that everyone here has their favorite liver place. We traveled to this southeastern Turkish city in the hopes of discovering the “best liver,” the best example of the ancient city’s delicacy, but upon arrival realized just how insurmountable a task that was. Discovering the best liver in Diyarbakir is like trying to discover the best slice of pizza in New York. Instead, we contented ourselves with a sampling. We started our “liver tour” – as we came to call it – near the entrance to Sur, the ancient center of Diyarbakir (named Amed in Kurdish). Sur is a storied place – it has been settled since 7500 BC, according to archaeological records, and has housed empires from the Hittites, to the Persians, to Alexander the great.

Across South Asia, arguments over which biryani is the best are not uncommon. For those from outside the region, differences in biryani are often reduced to “good versus bad,” but for those from South Asia, those differences can separate a tasty rice dish from the true taste of home. “To the world, it’s South Asian food,” says Nasruzzaman Naeem of Istanbul’s Asia Lounge Café, “but, to us, there are differences.” At the Asia Lounge Café, Restaurant and Cultural Center in the Ali Kuşçu neighborhood, two out of every three customers have a plate of biryani in front of them. To the initiated, this is kacchi biryani, kaccha meaning “raw.”

Those in Istanbul with a fried chicken craving can turn to faceless American fast food chains (Popeyes and KFC are both in town) or to newly trendy spots popping up in neighborhoods like Beşiktaş and Kadıköy. But those looking for quality and something different have a much better option: Syrian broasted chicken (or simply broasted in local Syrian dialect), served at the many chicken joints that have opened up throughout the city in recent years. Broasted chicken is named after the Broaster pressure cookers brand, first designed in Wisconsin in the early 1950s. Unlike an open-air fryer, this more sophisticated contraption seals the battered bird in what resembles a pressure cooker, releasing steam at the optimal time for a juicier, crispier and less greasy piece.

Gabriel Oktay Cili is a man of many talents. When we visited him on a winter day in January, he had a crowd of visitors packed into his tiny, tunnel-like shop on the main tourist drag in old Mardin, near the Syrian border with Turkey. Each had a cup of cardamom-laced Assyrian coffee or tea in hand and each was waiting for Gabriel to attend to them. For a half hour, he sold silver jewelry to one couple visiting the city and pierced the lip of a woman who worked in a restaurant down the street. He fixed the gold necklace of another with an ancient blowtorch and fitted a young man for a custom silver bracelet.

When a tiny three-table restaurant has but a single item on its nonexistent menu that it has served for nearly three quarters of a century, one steps in the door with high expectations and an enthusiastic appetite. These will be met and exceeded at Tarihi Odabaşı, a hole-in-the-wall in the heart of old Istanbul that has been making çiğ börek – a buoyant, lightly-fried pastry stuffed with ground beef that is a staple of Crimean Tatar cuisine – since 1950. The restaurant gets its name from the nearby Has Odabaşı Behruz Ağa Mosque, built in the 16th century by doyen Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan. It is located in the Çapa/Şehrimini neighborhood, which is inside the old city walls of Istanbul.

From syrup-drenched baklava to creamy milk puddings, Turkey has no shortage of sweet treats. But perhaps none have intrigued foreign visitors to Turkey as much as Turkish delight. Lokum is famous in the English-speaking world as the enchanted confection that entices Edmund to join the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but in reality, the sticky sweet has been enchanting audiences since it was first developed in the early 1800s. Dubbed “Turkish delight” by English traders, lokum inspired a wave of imitators across Europe. “Lokum predates gummy sweets – gummy sweets were made trying to replicate Turkish delight. They didn’t know the secret ingredient, which is to manage the pH level,” says Selim Cenkel, founder and usta at Marsel Delights.

For this week’s CB Book Club installment, we caught up with Andrea Lemieux, author of The Essential Guide to Turkish Wine: An exploration of one of the oldest and most unexpected wine countries (Canoe Tree Press, 2021). In this exhaustive nearly 300-page guide, Lemieux, a WSET Level 2-certified wine expert and blogger behind The Quirky Cork, traces the history of Turkey’s wine tradition, and offers insight on grapes, wineries and where to enjoy Turkish wine in Istanbul. For those planning a trip, the book is as practical as it is informative, with maps, addresses and contacts for wineries and venues throughout the country.

Roaming the streets of Istanbul at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday can be a surreal experience. The sun is shining, the seagulls are bellowing as they dip and dive – but the normally bustling streets are quiet. A few shops might be lifting their shutters, and cafés in younger neighborhoods may only just be putting on their first pot. Always a bit of a morning snoozer even on other days of the week, Istanbul is a lazy Sunday city like no other. At Lider Pide, however, Çetin and Cemil Zor are already slinging out fresh Trabzon-style pides to eager breakfast goers who’ve made the trek out to the Ümraniye district on Istanbul’s Asian side.

As the call to prayer drifts from mosque to mosque and lights flicker on in anticipation of dusk, everyone around us takes a sip of water and wolfs down a date, almost in unison. It is the start of Ramadan and, here in Sultanahmet Square, folks are breaking their first fast of this holy month. They have been waiting patiently for the loud cannon blast which announces the day’s end – a tradition of old that still persists here in the square, though the loud bang often frightens unsuspecting tourists – sitting on blankets spread in the square’s grassy patches and pulling tupperwared iftar meals out of plastic bags and picnic baskets.

It has been a bitter pill to swallow, but we've long accepted the fact that we'll likely never find proper Mexican food in Istanbul. What is available registers as sub-par Tex-Mex at best: hard-shell tacos, salsa that packs no punch, weak margaritas and the inevitable cactus/sombrero-dominated décor found in underwhelming Mexican-themed restaurants worldwide. A lack of understanding of the cuisine is as equally to blame as the scarcity of key Mexican staples in Turkey: corn tortillas, cotija cheese, good avocados, black beans and fresh cilantro, to name a few. Some of these ingredients can be found at specialty supermarkets or neighborhood organic bazaars if one is up for a tedious scavenger hunt, others are just unavailable full stop.

Hidden between two well-trodden avenues – the busy Halaskargazi and the glitz and glam of Vali Konağı – Kuyumcu İrfan Sokak is a back street in the high-end neighborhood of Nişantaşı. Here, cozy little lokantalar (Turkish diners), tobacco shops and chic cafés dwell in the shadow of the ancient Greek and Armenian buildings that give this part of Nişantaşı an aura of timeless elegance. Adding to that atmosphere is the miniscule pizzeria Azzurro Neopolitano, which in the two years since it opened has managed to snag the attention of pizza aficionados – and Italians – all over Istanbul. A quiet man, co-owner Ünal Yıldız comes out of the kitchen, his hands still dusted with flour.