What started off as a doner kebab hunt ended up with us trying some completely different Turkish foods.
The popular doner restaurants in the Beyoglu area of Istanbul were too popular and we couldn't get a table. So we wandered the streets aimlessly until I found something that looked interesting, a small 'Nohutlu Pilav' restaurant on a street corner.
The massive glass box display of rice, separated by layers of chickpeas, caught my eye.
I ordered some of that along with some chicken liver and potatoes. The shop made fresh ayran, a type of yoghurt drink that's very popular in Turkey, so I chose that as my drink rather than the cans of soda in their fridge. All together it was the healthiest meal I've eaten in a long time.
@LukeDamant Was saving his appetite for the doner kebab that we were originally hunting for, so played camera man for me while I sampled the food.
The ayran tasted fresh and delicious and had some mint added to it for an extra bit of a kick.
The food tasted nice enough, but wasn't that exciting. What do you expect from healthy food? I did decide to spice it up a bit with some tomato ketchup, which went well with it.
Shout out to the staff of that shop who were super friendly and helpful in explaining what the food was. Restaurant details are down below.
The durum / doner kebab hunt continued. We tried the original place that we wanted to go to, Durumzade, but it was still packed with kebab lovers. So we continued to wander the streets.
Unfortunately my camera was on all the wrong setting for this video. I accidently changed the profile. This meant all my footage was cropped in, noisy, and with loads of motion blur that was especially awful in low light. The result is that all the footage of us wandering the streets, which was just after sunset, was completely unusable so I had to cut it from the final video.
So fast forward about 30 minutes and we found a small restaurant that had lots of tasty looking local grub on display. You see a lot of these places that have pre-made food in trays, displayed in their window, and it always looks tempting.
While I was thinking about which one I should get, the owner's nephew suggested Pide, also known as Turkish Pizza, which they make fresh in a special oven.
That sounded good to me and Luke was up for it too, despite his heart being set on a kebab. We ordered the Kuşbaşılı Pide, which has meat, cheese, tomato and peppers.
Again, the owner was very friendly and happy for us to watch him make the pide from scratch. The doughballs were rolled out into an oval shape, not round like a traditional pizza. There was no pizza sauce, instead a pre-prepared topping containing all the ingredients was added. It looked like a Mexican salsa.
Cheese was then added on top. It looked like mozzarella but I asked and was told that it was a type of Turkish cheese.
The edges of the base are rolled up and covered in egg, giving a nice crust to the pide after it cooks in the massive oven, which looks big enough to fit about 100 pizzas.
Of course the pide was delicious. The owner's nephew asked me to rate it out of 10 and I give it 11. Luke gave it a 12.
We didn't stay for dessert. Instead we decided to go back to the main street in Beyoglu and get bullied by the tricky ice cream vendors. Something you have to do at least once on a trip to Turkey.
** 1st Restaurant (Nohutlu Pilav) **
Name: Meşhur Unkapanı Pilavcısı Beyoğlu
Address: Kalyoncu Kulluğu, Tarlabaşı bulvarı, mahallesi No:230/A, 34435 Beyoğlu/İstanbul
** 2nd Restaurant (Turkish Pizza) **
Name: Karadeniz Pide Evi
Address: Asmalı Mescit Mh, Oteller Sk. No:8, 34430 Beyoğlu/İstanbul
** 3rd Restaurant (Turkish Ice Cream) **
Name: Börek Center
Address: İstiklal Cad
00:00 Kebab Hunt
00:40 Nohutlu Pilav
10:46 Turkish Pizza
34:37 Turkish Ice Cream
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7 июн 2024
