Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [157]
The prices are lower the further you delve into the market from the main entrance, especially on the side streets, appropriately named Street of the Coffee Roasters, Street of the Scale Makers, Street of the Wicker Weavers, etc.—one is never in doubt about what is for sale in which street. Time your visit to end with lunch at Pandeli (open only for lunch; Mısır Çarşısı 1 / +90 212 527 3909), located down the stairs to the left of the main entrance of the market. It’s one of the oldest restaurants in Istanbul, dating from 1901, and though both the staff and the food receive mixed reviews, you’ll have a fine meal there. If your timing is off, at least step inside to see its turquoise-aqua tiled interior, which elicits lots of wows.
Eating in Istanbul
ANYA VON BREMZEN
FROM STREET food to chic new restaurants, Anya von Bremzen shares a true cornucopia of choices for visitors in this piece. Afiyet olsun! (“Bon appétit!”) (And the phrase to thank the people who have prepared your food is Elinize sağhk!, “May God give health to your hands.”)
ANYA VON BREMZEN, introduced previously, is the author, most recently, of The New Spanish Table (Workman, 2005). She wrote this piece for Departures, the magazine exclusively for American Express Platinum Card holders.
STANDING ON the Galata Bridge eating a peach, I’m only half looking at the lineup of imperial mosques along the Golden Horn. Instead I’m contemplating my new purchase, which isn’t a gold bracelet from the Grand Bazaar or a kilim—though I certainly need one. What I’ve bought is an apartment, a little place with a beautiful Bosporus view in the neighborhood of Cihangir, Istanbul’s leafy hub of café life. The thought of my acquisition has me in a state of simultaneous gloom and euphoria. Gloom because Turkey’s currency is fluctuating like crazy, because the prospect of the country’s joining the EU seems real one day and phantasmagoric the next, because the local Ikea has sold out of the extralong curtain rods I need. Euphoria because to me Istanbul is the most fascinating, most ravishing city on earth, a feeling that hasn’t wavered since I first ate a peach on the Galata Bridge twenty years ago.
Everything one hears about Istanbul is pretty much true. Yes, the Hagia Sophia is big and byzantine, the Grand Bazaar both a treasure trove and a tourist trap. Yes, this metropolis of twelve million people physically and metaphorically straddles Europe and Asia. It is by turns provincial and cosmopolitan, Muslim yet resolutely secular, exhilarating and exasperating. Even the rumors of Istanbul’s transcendent new coolness aren’t vastly exaggerated. Beyond the clichés, though, what keeps luring me back is the texture of everyday life. The ferry ride at dusk as the skies flare cinematically over the minarets. The tulip-shaped glasses at my corner tea garden. The courtly smile of my local pistachio vendor. And the food.
With the endless grills, the subtle spicing, the celebration of yogurt, legumes, and sun-ripened vegetables, Turkish cuisine is the last frontier of healthy Mediterranean cooking. The kebabs and savory pastries called börek alone are reason enough to move here. While Istanbul isn’t the next capital of Spanish-style avant-garde cooking—so fashionable in Europe these days—its hedonistic high society ensures that there are plenty of spots that outglamour anything in Miami Beach or Hong Kong.
It’s a sprawling city, divided into three parts by the Bosporus strait and its offshoot, the Golden Horn. Though many tourists tend to stick close to the Old City—especially the historic Sultanahmet district around Topkapı Palace, the Hagia Sophia, and the Blue