Food And Drink in Turkey

Turkish food, in this section, splits into watching, eating and cooking. Watching means the Bosphorus: breakfast on the water, a lunch cruise, an evening dinner with a Turkish programme or an Arabic show. The food there is straightforward and the value lies elsewhere — the city goes past the rail while you sit at the table. Eating means Istanbul on foot: food tours of four to five hours through markets and lokantas, where you eat small amounts often, tasting routes for people who came for the food, and separately a four-hour Turkish breakfast with a view, which is an activity in its own right.

Cooking is the third part. Istanbul has an Ottoman cuisine class at Deraliye, working through palace recipes, and Cookistan, which starts with shopping for ingredients at the market and ends at a shared table. Cappadocia offers a different genre: a Turkish night in a cave restaurant with unlimited drinks and belly dance — less a dinner than an evening show built around food. The same format runs at Side.

Practical notes. Food tours go ahead in any weather and involve a lot of walking, so dress for the forecast and save your appetite. Cooking classes end with eating what you made, so a separate dinner afterwards is unnecessary. Bosphorus dinner cruises last three to four hours, drinks are often billed separately, and a window table is worth confirming at booking. Vegetarians do well in Turkish cooking — meze, vegetables and pulses make up half the menu — but flag substitutions in advance.