In a tangerine orchard in Mızraklı, one of the many mountainous villages in Turkey's southern Hatay province, Yeliz Yoğun sat next to a burn pit rolling yufka – Turkish flatbreads – for her mother, Sabah, to bake. On this summer morning, the temperature was already high while standing under the trees, away from the fire, and the sun was not at its highest yet. Sabah was sitting next to the flame but was determined to finish all the dough they had prepared since the first light of the day. An NGO called Dünya Evimiz (“The World Is Our Home”), provides Yeliz and Sabah with donated flour as part of a program to distribute free yufka or tandır bread baked by women to people living in tent camps around Hatay.

Tarlabaşı, right in the heart of Istanbul’s European side, has the reputation of being among the worst areas in the city. While it is certainly run down, we have spent considerable time in the quarter over the years and have had no problems. Its reputation is exaggerated, and if you aren't looking for trouble, you aren't likely to find it. Amid the once-elegant and now dilapidated century-old apartments built by the Greeks and Armenians that originally lived in the area, there are other buildings from a variety of eras on the verge of collapse, while a massive “urban renewal” project that has been ongoing for over a decade amid legal and financial issues has stuck out like a sore thumb as the rest of the rugged quarter retains its character.

A friend once said that God could never bring all of his people to one place. But then he visited the Aksaray neighborhood in Istanbul, a stone's throw from Sultanahmet's iconic mosques. Aksaray acts as both a landing point for new arrivals and a launching pad for those trying to make it to Europe. The neighborhood provides a culinary roadmap for the city’s immigrant communities and it teems with delicious diversity – with restaurants serving everything from Somali to Georgian fare. Unlike more recent transplants, Ethiopians have been in the city for a long time. Take the old story of Beshir Agha, for example. Born in Ethiopia, he was brought as a slave to the Ottoman Empire but was eventually appointed Chief Harem Eunuch in Istanbul under Sultan Ahmed III in 1716, later becoming the third most powerful person in the palace.

In the bustling, dense, cosmopolitan neighborhood of Kurtuluş, the potential for discovery seems endless, as compelling stories and flavors lie behind unsuspecting doors. One of CB's tour guides and fellow urban explorer Benoit Hanquet recently tipped us off to a hidden gem, a place that, from the outside, is a totally nondescript, signless café that we have passed by hundreds of times over the years without ever noticing. Located next to a popular pizza place on the corner of Baruthane Avenue and Eşref Efendi Street, a buzzing area where a handful of bars, meyhanes, restaurants and cafés have popped up over the past few years, Özlem Cafe represents a nod to the neighborhood's past while offering an atmosphere and menu that distinguishes it from similar establishments.

With a main terminal of 1.44 million square meters, the new Istanbul Airport (IST) takes a lesson from its home city, paying homage to the gods of unnecessary sprawl and shopping malls. Rather than waste away under the fluorescent lights paying triple the price on duty free and forcing down disappointingly dry pide, store your bags for a few bucks and head out into the city for some unforgettable meals and sights. When circling into IST or the Asian side of the city’s Sabiha Gökçen Airport (SAW), the unending view of building upon building will tell you immediately: Istanbul is not the city to hop on a bus and see what happens.

On a mid-June night, one Istanbul kitchen buzzed with Turkish, Arabic and English spoken simultaneously. All women in the kitchen were from Hatay, a province which they – like many other locals – prefer to call Antakya, and which was heavily affected by the earthquakes earlier this year. Delicacies of their hometown filled the pots and pans on the stove, and the fires burning under them increased the already high temperature in the room. Ayda Suadioğlu, a chef from Antakya, was sweating in the hot kitchen, yet she was determined to get everything ready for the night ahead. If anyone doubted whether they needed more butter or olive oil, how fine they should cut the za’atar, or whether the köfte in the oven was ready, Ayda knew the answer.

Alican Akdemir holds a glass up the light to confirm it is spotless before decanting half of a 200-milliliter green bottle of mineral water. Holding the glass against a napkin, he examines the color and notes the rate and amount of the carbonation, which he describes as “aggressive.” Having noted the visual appearance, he brings the glass to his nose, checking for any odors. “It shouldn’t smell of anything, just like it should be clear,” he says. Akdemir takes a sip, gently aspirating. “It’s slightly sour, salty, and high in carbonation,” he says.

In every corner of Istanbul, enticing traces of Turkish cuisine from throughout the country, as well as the cooking of other neighboring regions, can be tucked away in the city's backstreets. These range from a Bulgarian kebab joint in Bağcılar on the western European side to a Bosnian meyhane in Pendik on the eastern stretches of the Anatolian side and a Georgian restaurant in the heart of Beyoğlu. We can add the suburban Marmara Seaside district of Maltepe to this formidable list, as it is home to Sılaşara, which is perhaps the only Abkhaz restaurant in the world outside of Abkhazia or Georgia. Officially considered a part of Georgia, the region of Abkhazia straddles Georgia's northwest Black Sea coast, and its small population is dwarfed by the number of people with Abkhaz roots who have called Turkey home for well over a century.

Editor’s Note: Pizzeria Babylon is moving to a new location, but will be open again soon for business! Check out their Instagram and Facebook for updates from Ishok. Nestled in Turkey's southeastern province of Mardin is the historic region of Tur Abdin, meaning “The Mountain of God's Servants” in the language of the Syriac people (also known as Assyrians). These Orthodox Christians have called the area home for millennia and still speak a Semitic mother tongue that is the most similar living language to the Aramaic spoken by Jesus Christ.

Istanbul's western suburb of Küçükçekmece is flanked by a small lake of the same name, the water of which flows from a river in the north and out into the Marmara Sea in the opposite direction. The coastline of the lake is just steps away from a train that stops at the foot of the Cennet neighborhood, where a hillside of ramshackle, single-story houses with gardens look out over the water. At the top of the hill, the neighborhood takes on a more modern character with six-story apartments and a bustling pedestrian avenue packed with cafes and restaurants.

In the main hall of Antakya’s bus station terminal, there are deep cracks in the walls, rubble litters the floor and dozens of ceiling panels seem to hang on by a thread, the entire thing threatening to collapse at any moment. Bus companies have set up mobile desks outside of the station, and it is from one of these where I buy my evening ticket back to the city of Adana, about four hours to the west by bus. Even though I've just arrived, I already have to plan my exit because there isn't really anywhere left in Antakya to stay the night. Like most structures in the city, the terminal was damaged in February's massive earthquake, the worst of its kind in modern Turkish history.

Editor’s note: In the latest installment of our recurring First Stop feature, we asked travel writer Caroline Eden about some of her go-to spots in Istanbul. Eden has written for the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Financial Times, among other publications, and has filed stories from Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan for BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent. Eden is also the author of the culinary travelogue Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes, Through Darkness and Light (Hardie Grant; May 2019) and co-author of Samarkand: Recipes & Stories from Central Asia & the Caucasus (Kyle Books; July 2016), a Guardian book of the year in 2016 and winner of the Guild of Food Writers Award for best food and travel book in 2017. You can follow Caroline on Instagram and Twitter @edentravels.

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.

Chefs Kaan Sakarya and Derin Arıbaş usually spend their days preparing elegantly plated dishes like lamb tenderloin with warm cherry freekeh and purslane at Basta! Neo Bistro, the duo’s second joint venue in Istanbul’s Kadıköy neighborhood after their popular gourmet-wraps spot Basta! Street Food Bar. Both trained at French culinary institutes, they still refer to mise en place when talking about their prep cooking – even when that means setting things up inside a tent to make vats of soup to serve 700 people. Since a pair of massive earthquakes struck a broad swath of southeastern Turkey on February 6, more than 200 chefs from across the country have headed to the disaster area as part of an ad hoc response called the Acil Gıda Kolektifi (Emergency Food Collective).

The southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep is famed for its rich gastronomic culture, vast array of historic sites, and bustling bazaars. It was among the cities hit by the disastrous 7.8 earthquake on February 6 that has claimed more than 40,000 lives in Turkey and northern Syria. While Gaziantep fared much better compared to some of its neighbors in the region including Antakya, Kahramanmaraş and Adıyaman, the city was still struck in no small way. Large sections of its 2000-year-old fortress collapsed, and numerous centuries-old mosques in the historic center were damaged to varying degrees. High-rise apartments in the upmarket part of town were riddled with cracks and rendered uninhabitable.