4 Must-Try Restaurants in Istanbul - Foodie Recs
When you get to Istanbul, you'll be surrounded with plenty of food options from restaurants to street vendors. If you're not sure what to eat yet check out my other post introducing you to the different kinds of Turkish food you'll most likely encounter. Whenever I vacation somewhere food is one of the top priorities for me because it's one of the things I love most about traveling, trying out the local cuisine. I usually get my restaurant recommendations any way I can, from reading and researching online, asking locals as well as tour guides, and stumbling upon them organically.
After trying out many restaurants in Istanbul, I can highly recommend these four that were absolutely delicious and I would definitely pay a second visit to. Çiya was a result of online research, Dürümcü Raif Usta was recommended by a local, Matbah Ottoman Palace Cuisine was reserved with our private tour guide and conveniently located near the big sites, and Şirin Fırın was stumbled upon organically.
Çiya
Keep an eye out for the three story restaurant
One of the most popular foodie destinations in Istanbul, Çiya is located on the Asian side in the fish market district of Kadiköy. Just do a quick google search and you can read all the different reviews raving about this restaurant. The menu changes daily depending on the chef’s preference so you’ll have to check out their menu to see what they have available for the day.
There are three branches all across the street from each other, Çiya Kebap, Çiya Kebap 2, and Çiya Sofrası. Çiya Sofrası serves home-style dishes, Çiya Kebap 2 only specializes in kebaps, while Çiya Kebap dishes up meat and vegetarian kebaps as well as lahmacun, sort of like a Turkish pizza.
We ordered the Çiya kebap and meat pide with sausages and bell peppers. The pide was pretty standard but the Çiya kebap was amazing. It’s beef stuffed with walnuts, parsley, and mint wrapped inside a flatbread and glued together with mozzarella cheese with a yogurt dipping sauce. We were also served bread with some pretty tasty dipping spreads so by the end of the meal we were very stuffed and satisfied.
Dürümcü Raif Usta
When you walk into Dürümcü Raif Usta you’ll immediately run into a horde of apron-clad employees running an assembly line for their gorgeous looking kebaps. Skewered and roasted over an open fire, the entire restaurant can get a good whiff of the meat and spices wafting through the air. There’s bar seating in the restaurant or you can step through the backdoor and find little tables and stools set up along the sidewalk and street.
Not long after placing an order, our lamb, beef, and liver comes out immediately on a colorful platter with lavaş bread, tomatoes, lettuce, parsley and four different spices including powdered sumac, chili pepper, black pepper, and cumin. The meat is very tender and already flavorful on its own without the extra spices. The bread and veggies were a great addition to help balance the meat with the bread’s soft texture and the vegetable’s crisp freshness.
Matbah Ottoman Palace Cuisine
Located conveniently next to Hagia Sophia, Matbah Ottoman Palace Cuisine is a great dining option to stop at in between sightseeing the major sites. The dining area is essentially in a sunroom with floor to ceiling glass that half opens to the outside so you get an amazing view and feel of the sun. When we were seated, we were immediately served a complimentary glass of sweet pomegranate şerbet.
What I like about this restaurant is that their menu uses some of the old recipes that the chefs in the palaces used to serve to the sultans. It’s amazing to see how far back some of the cuisine dates to and a pretty awesome feeling to eat the same food that was served to a sultan.
My favorite item on the menu was an appetizer, the Sailor’s Roll, with a recipe that dates back to the 15th century. It was one of those moments when I was craving for börek and scoured for it on every single menu. This particular one intrigued me because it was made with seven different Turkish cheeses, fried in olive oil, and served with currants and honey for dipping.
It looks really simple but it was one of the most delicious things I ate in Istanbul. It was golden fried to perfection with the ideal amount of crunch from the exterior of the phyllo dough yet softness from the gooey layered center. The saltiness from the cheese balanced perfectly with the sweetness from the honey. The next time I come here I’m just going to order four of these and call it a meal.
Menu items with the dates of when the recipes were created
Sailor's Roll cut in half
Şirin Fırın
I may be going a little overboard with the amount of crazed obsession I have with börek, but it really is my favorite food coming out of Istanbul. On our last day in Istanbul we headed up to the Galata Tower bright and early to soak in the marvelous view of the beautiful city we were about to leave. While up there we began thumbing through our Istanbul Eats guidebook to figure out what our last meal would be before we left for the airport.
Our last views of the beautiful city from Galata Tower
We found one restaurant pretty close to the Tower that had great reviews in the book. However, when we descended from the tower and looked for the restaurant, it was nowhere to be found. We even split up and walked up and down the blocks looking carefully at every single sign but the restaurant seemed to no longer exist.
However while I was walking up and down the same streets over and over again I did notice a really cute green bakery that reminded me exactly of our neighborhood La Boulange [that’s now closed :(! ] on the corner of Polk and Green in San Francisco.
Eventually we stopped by another restaurant and asked one of the waiters for directions. I don’t think he understood us very well but he kept pointing down one alley and saying, “Sharon Becky Lee” over and over again. Maybe a lady named Sharon Becky Lee down that alley spoke fluent English and would be able to guide us?
So we followed his directions and walked down the alley he ordered us to. Again, we couldn’t find the restaurant. But this time I looked at the cute green bakery and saw the sign said Şirin Fırın | Bakery. Going back to my own notes on the pronunciation of Turkish words, any s with the accompanied squiggly makes an sh sound, thus making Şirin Bakery sound like “Sharon Becky Lee”. The waiter was directing us to the cute green bakery.
When we looked inside, we saw an assortment of pastries and sweets that looked delightfully appetizing. However my gaze was immediately drawn to, of course, the börek. I actually didn’t want to eat there because I felt guilty scouring for it in all the other restaurants only to be disappointed that it was never the rolled börek I was looking for. However, when I heard someone else order it and saw the chef pull the flaky pastry out of the oven, I knew it was the one I had been waiting for.
Without hesitation I ordered three to go, one cheese, one potato, and one beef. We immediately walked back to the tower and opened up the bags to release the steaming hot pastries. One bite and perfection. It was the one I had been looking for the whole trip and we accidentally stumbled upon it on our last day, it was the perfect ending to the perfect trip. Later when I tried to look up the bakery online, it seemed pretty unheard of, only stumbled upon by several tourists as there were only five reviews on TripAdvisor. It just goes to show that while following the best restaurants on guidebooks can be helpful, stumbling upon some organically can also be amazing.