Istanbul by Night Culinary Tour: Local Tavern and Gourmet Street Foods

Itinerary
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Stop At: Istiklal Street Taksim Beyoglu, Istanbul Turkey

Istanbul is famous across Turkey for its outstanding street food but discovering good eateries in a big city is not always easy. Not to worry, that’s where we come in! We’ll help you experience all the flavors the city has to offer by guiding you through Istanbul’s best street food area called Beyoglu or a.k.a. Pera.

When you’re in Istanbul, you’ll soon realize that there are a lot of street vendors in every neighborhood selling all kinds of delicacies. From the iconic Istanbul simit to a fish sandwich by the Bosphorus, the city has lots of food that you can eat on the go or very late in the evening when everything else is closed.

BÖREK: We start our food journey with delicious Börek; is a family of baked filled pastries made of a thin flaky dough known as phyllo, of Anatolian origins and also found in the cuisines of the Balkans, Levant, Mediterranean, and other countries in Eastern Europe and Western Asia.

MEYHANE (local tavern) is a traditional restaurant or bar in Turkey. It serves alcoholic beverages like wine, rakı, vodka, beer with meze and traditional foods. “Meyhane” is composed of two Persian words: mey (wine) and khāneh (house). A meyhane refers to a restaurant with traditional food, decoration, and music.

STUFFED MUSSEL: After fill our stomach, this time try some stuffed mussels (Midye dolması) is the other iconic seafood-centered street food in Istanbul, and you’ll see people standing around the cart while the vendor squeezes lemon on each dolma before handing them out. People can usually eat a lot of these in one go, so you’ll have to let the vendor know when you’ve had enough. Midye dolması can be found all around the city and is usually a very popular late-night snack.

Stop at another street food vendor for İçli Köfte; Sabirtaşı makes Istanbul’s best içli köfte (a crispy bulgur shell filled with minced meat, parsley, and sautéed pine nuts), and if you don’t feel like walking up to their restaurant, their İstiklal Street vendor is always around to serve up the köfte on the go. Made by hand on a daily basis, the içli köfte are downright delicious.

MENENGIC PISTACHIO COFFEE: We are sure, easily you will find Turkish coffee all around Istanbul but you should know another traditional type of coffee drink as Menengic Pistachio Coffee. This tree is Latin name is pistacia terebinthustur. In Turkey, menengic trees grow naturally in mountainous rural parts of the Mediterranean and Southeastern Anatolia region without any need of any planting process.

DURUM KEBAB: You must not leave Turkey without tasting Dürüm Kebab that is the sliced meat of a döner kebab may be served on a plate with various accompaniments, stuffed into a pita or other type of bread as a sandwich, or wrapped in a thin flatbread such as lavash or yufka, known as a dürüm. Since the early 1970s, the sandwich or wrap form has become popular around the world as a fast food dish sold by kebab shops and is often called simply a “kebab”. The sandwich generally contains salad or vegetables, which may include tomato, lettuce, cabbage, onion with sumac, fresh or pickled cucumber, or chili, and various types of sauces.

BEYOGLU CHOCOLATE: Turkish people love sweets and confectionaries. Beyoğlu Chocolate; one of the most famous chocolates in Istanbul are the milk or dark chocolate bars filled with enormous hazelnuts, pistachios, or almonds, sold on İstiklal Street at Meşhur Beyoğlu Çikolatacısı. The manufacturer of these grab-and-go chocolates is Elit, which has been around since 1924.

BAKLAVA (baqlawah) is a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of filo pastry filled with chopped walnuts or pistachio and sweetened with syrup or honey.

TURKISH TEA: We can finish our delicious journey with Turkish Tea, is popular throughout Turkey and the Turkish diaspora. Turkish tea culture also extends to Northern Cyprus and some countries in the Balkan Peninsula..

Duration: 4 hours