One of the two tours we did in Istanbul was the full day Culinary Backstreets Walking Tour. This tour was highly recommended on Tripadvisor so when I read about the different walks on their website I became very excited. Istanbul has so many different cultures, which would make eating  your way around different neighbourhoods a treat.

We chose the “Born on the Bosphorus: Exploring Three Distinct Waterside Neighborhoods”. The reason we chose it was because it would take us into the Asian side of Istanbul and because all the neighbourhoods would be around the Bosphorus, not to mention that we would otherwise miss out on these locations.

Beşiktaş

The first location was on the European side of the city. Beşiktaş was quite close to the location of our hotel in Beyoğlu. It was actually walking distance, but it was early so we took a taxi. We met the group near the ferry station. Luckily, It was a small group of people, some younger some older, but everyone seemed nice, especially our host Ipek was very bubbly and chatty. The group was a bit shy at the start but because of her talkativeness we all relaxed.

The first stop in Beşiktaş was a small shop to sample some Su böreği. Su böreği is made out of filo pastry. It’s incredibly delicious! My favourite was the one that contained cheese! I grabbed a few handfuls whenever the plate went past (not once considering the fact that eating would be a full-day affair).

Pretty stuffed already, we also had an actual breakfast, in an area that is known as breakfast street. People go there early in the morning and stay most of the day, because the dishes keep coming. It’s kind of like the Cypriot/Greek meze only then in the morning, basically less meat more sweet to go with your bread. Culinary Backstreets chose Çakmak Kahvaltı Salonu as our venue to try the different breakfast options. My favourite dishes were the menemen (scrambled eggs), bal kaymak (clotted cream in honey), and the tahini and molasses dip. It’s also common to drink a lot of tea in Turkey. Unfortunately, I really do not like tea. Luckily for me, the glasses are really small. I drank it in a few sips and whenever they offered more I politely refused.

After breakfast we walked around Beşiktaş a bit to digest the huge quantity of food we had foolishly consumed. We visited a fish market and we visited a courtyard cafe where people come to play games like backgammon. As I said in my previous post about Istanbul, cats and dogs are treated very well in Istanbul and especially in Beşiktaş we saw many people walking around with cat food to feed the cats.

Beşiktaş looks like a great place to go for drinks or food with friends. There are a lot of cafes with outdoor seating, which would make this area very vibrant in the evening.

The last stop in Beşiktaş  was a little Simit cart. These are scattered all over the city; they are quite similar to the carts you see in Germany selling pretzels. We all received one simit to eat during our ferry trip to the other side of the Bosphorus. I wasn’t a fan of the simit, it’s basically just dry bread, quite flavourless. I would have much preferred to nibble on a pretzel on the way to the other side of the Bosphorus.

In the picture below you can see the Maiden’s Tower. The legend behind the name of the tower is that an emperor had a daughter he loved very much. However, one day an oracle prophesied that she would be killed by a venomous snake on her 18th birthday. The emperor decided to place his daughter as far away from land as possible by having a tower built in the middle of the Bosphorus to protect her. She was visited only by her father. On her 18th birthday, her father brought her a basket of fruit to celebrate that he was able to prevent the prophecy. However, he did not notice that a venomous snake was residing inside the basket and when his daughter took out a piece of fruit she was bitten by the snake and died. Thus the prophesy came true.

Üsküdar

The ferry only takes 10 minutes to cross the Bosphorus. When you reach Üsküdar, you’ll notice the difference between the two areas straightaway. It’s much more conservative than Beşiktaş.

We first visited a famous mosque which was designed by Mimar Sinan (who also built the famous Süleymaniye Mosque). The Mihrimah Sultan Mosque (aka Iskele Mosque) is located right next to the ferry stop so it’s not easy to miss when you exit the ferry. Mihr-î-Mah means sun and moon. This mosque was one of two mosques built by Mihrimah Sultan, a Valide Sultan (Sultan Mother) with a lot of economic resources. Both mosques were designed by Mimar Sinan. The legend is that Mimar Sinan fell in love with Mihrimah. Apparently on the 21st of March (when day time and night time are equal and Mihrimah’s (hence her name sun and moon) birthday) at the time of sunset, if you have clear view of both mosques, you will notice that as the sun sets behind the only minaret of the mosque in Edirnekapı, the moon rises between the two minarets of the mosque in Üsküdar. Isn’t that sweet?

Right beside the mosque is a little honey shop called Bingöl Bal Pazarı where we tasted different kinds of honey (I never knew that the flavour of honey depends on which blossoms the honey bees visit). We tried wildflower honey, chestnut honey and pepper honey. This was a very informative stop for me.

After the honey, we went to the Üsküdar market where we tried a lot of different foods.

 

For example carob and other dried fruits in the first shop. I never tried carob before, it was quite nice. It’s kind of used as a substitute to cocoa and it’s much healthier. My favourite dried fruit was fig. Again, something I never tried before. I tried so many new things on this foodie tour.

I didn’t try the lokum (aka Turkish Delight). I already knew I don’t like it at all, because it’s way too sweet and the flavours are too overpowering, especially the rose flavoured one gives me mild nightmares. The shop looked really cute though.

From sweet straight to salty. We tried some super, insanely tasty pastirma (aka pastrami). Who knew that pastrami actually originates from the Ottoman Empire? I always just assumed it was Italian. Legend has it the horsemen in Turkey preserved their meat by curing it and then hanging it down from their saddles and pressing on it with their legs as they rode. Pastirma is derived from the Turkish word bastirmak, which means “to press.”

Turkish people really like their vegetables pickled. This is called Turşu. Apparently it goes well with raki, I did not get the opportunity to test this theory though. I quite liked the different pickled vegetables, but my favourite was the pickled cabbage (which is basically sauerkraut).

 

We made a quick pitstop in a former bath house and went straight on to a market stall to try some sour plums and fresh cherries. The guy at this stall was so sweet and attentive, making sure everyone tried the best fruits and he was ready with tissues and water whenever someone acted like they would need it. That having been said, the sour plums are not my favourite fruit. I don’t understand why they can’t let them ripen into the super sweet and tasty plums instead, the way a plum is meant to be. These sour plums have the texture of apples and are sour like you wouldn’t believe.

After all these different flavours it was time for a break from all the eating. It was time for a delicious Turkish coffee and some fortune telling at Cafer Erol. I’m not going to show my coffee cup with its fortune in the pictures below, because I don’t want to jinx it.

Luckily we had the strong taste coffee still in our mouths, because the next bit was not as appetizing as the others. We arrived at the offal section of the market, where brains, hearts and livers are on display (sorry for the pictures). We didn’t get to try these, instead a sheep’s head was hacked up in front of us so that we could try different pieces of the head. My friend was disgusted and walked away. I tried really hard to hang around. Our host pointed at all the different parts of the head and I decided I could eat a piece of the cheek (the eye and tongue I left to the others). The flavour was OK, probably because of the huge amount of oregano. I was once confronted with similar pieces of meat when I was in Cyprus, back then I didn’t try it. I’m happy I tried it now, but I will not try it again soon.

After this we didn’t get to see any more meat. We went back to the area where the coffee shop was to have some fish instead. I was super happily surprised by how tasty the achovies were. I was afraid of the bones, but I guess since it is a little fish it doesn’t have any solid bones. The stuffed mussels were also really delicious. If I would go to Turkey again I certainly order these two dishes.

If all that food wasn’t enough, we also had a typical Istanbul lunch in Kanaat Lokantası, which is basically a restaurant with a big lunch buffet. I didn’t manage to take any pictures and to be honest, knowing there would be another area we would be exploring food wise; I didn’t really eat that much.

Kuzguncuk

Kuzguncuk is a short bus ride to the north of Üsküdar. As promised on this Bosphorus Tour, it’s still right next to the Bosphorus. Even though it’s only a few stops away from the conservative area, Kuzguncuk couldn’t be any different. When Jews were expelled from Spain and Portugal, they settled into the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, particularly Kuzguncuk was their area of choice. However, they left to move to Israel when that was established.  In the 18th century, Armenians began to settle in the area and the first church was built.

There is a Greek church too. 

This area is my favourite area in Istanbul (at least of what I have seen). The houses are colourful and gorgeous, no wonder quite a few celebrities settle down in Kuzguncuk. We also visited a little city garden where people can grow vegetable patches. All-in-all it’s such a wonderful little place to walk around in.

Our final meal was a butterfly fish soup at a Kuzguncuk restaurant.

We concluded it all by walking back to the Bosphorus to take a ferry back to the European side.

Conclusion

At 4pm our tour was concluded. It was so much fun to see these different sides of the city. I loved how I went into areas I wouldn’t have gone to as a normal tourist. I tried foods I normally wouldn’t have tried. The tour guide, Ipek, was fantastic and knew the history of the city and its food very well. If I go to another town where Culinary Backstreets hosts a walking tour, I would certainly consider going on a tour again. It’s a great way to spend a day and to eat your way around a city.