Turkish Delights: A Sensory Journey through Istanbul

Turkish Delights: A Sensory Journey through Istanbul

The sensory city of
Istanbul
reveals itself to be as layered, addictive and
devourable as its endless culinary delights.

On Galata Bridge, which stretches across Istanbul’s Golden Horn,
we let ourselves be carried along by a tidal wave of bodies as they
move across the swell of the Bosphorus. Fishermen line the edge of
the water, whipping back their lines to reveal glittering carcanets
of sardines, which they fling into buckets of ice water. Boats
glide by beneath us, ferrying tightly packed crowds from the Asian
to the European side of the city and back again, while flocks of
seagulls fill the sky along with the call to prayer, which bellows
down in musical waves from the surrounding mosques.

We weave our way past hundreds of food stalls, trying hard to
stay focused and not ruin yet another meal by filling up on the
street snacks that hit you in the face whenever you step outside –
sesame-studded simit, sizzling corn, cups of sliced watermelon,
roasted chestnuts, sticky lokma, rice-stuffed mussels and fresh
sardines hissing on hot plates, ready to be piled into crusty
bread, topped with pickles and handed over to hungry passersby. All
over the city, blood-red cherries and shiny greengages are piled
onto carts, marking the beginning of summer.



On the other side of the bridge, the spice market crackles in
the heat of the day. Vendors hand out samples of salty cheese,
wrinkled black olives slick with oil, sugared nuts and garlands of
dried chillies, vying for the attention of the crowd as we pour
down the tangle of cobbled streets. Every tea house and lokanta
spills over with people sipping tea on silver trays or knocking
back raki. Bus horns honk, ferries wail, seagulls caw. Our trip
here coincides with Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of
Ramadan, and the whole place feels almost overwhelmingly full of
life. Yet to our surprise, one stall owner happily remarks: “You
chose a good time to visit – the city is much calmer this
week!”

There are few places on earth where as many cultural contrasts
live in such unison as Istanbul. It is a city for the senses,
immense in its colours, sounds, smells and tastes, a heady
concoction of East and West, old world and new world, cutting-edge
design and the faded, ramshackle relics of the past. We drift from
crowd to crowd, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, snoozing in taxis
as they come to a standstill in steamy traffic jams and piling into
street-side cafés to join locals in the daily (and often hourly)
rituals of tea, tooth-aching sweets and coffee brewed in copper
pots on flaming hot sand.



In one afternoon you can go from breathing in the scent of
leather, dust and honey at a 600-year-old bazaar to sipping craft
cocktails in a tiled bar surrounded by tattooed twenty- somethings;
from staring up at the Hagia Sophia’s golden mosaics to a
contemporary art space inside an old post office; from a slick,
minimalist restaurant to a carpeted chair on a street corner,
licking syrup from your fingers in a plume of hookah smoke.

“Istanbul is a young-spirited, dynamic city,” Bora Hoşver,
marketing director of the Galataport development tells us. “When
change happens, the original soul of the city has to be respected,
or all of that spirit would die.” The project is set to finish in
2020, reopening a major stretch along the Karaköy coastline that
has been closed for almost 200 years. Made up of reclaimed
historical buildings, it will be a place to eat local cuisine, stay
in revamped rooms and visit contemporary art spaces including the
new Istanbul Modern, designed by Renzo Piano.

Galataport signifies another chapter in Istanbul’s history, when
new life is being poured into the oldest parts of the city. At
Soho House stylish guests gather on a fairy
light-strung rooftop overlooking the Beyoğlu district as smoke
drifts over from a wood-fired oven. The frescoes, creamy marble and
creaking doors of this 19th-century palazzo have been lovingly
preserved, joined by luxurious bedrooms, a cocktail bar, spa and
tree-lined courtyard. Over in the sleepy district of Bomonti,
crowds pile into the Bomontiada complex, an old brewery turned
entertainment centre. After being left abandoned for decades, it is
now home to an outdoor cinema, contemporary galleries, the iconic
Babylon music venue and restaurants such as Kilimanjaro, a seasonal
small-plate eatery where the bread, yoghurt, charcuterie and
preserves are made in-house and served alongside a carefully
selected list of Turkish wines, which we slurp happily as the sun
goes down and the breezy courtyard below us fills.



When it comes to exploring, the city works in the opposite way
to most. It seems to grow and swell the more you walk it. The
flavours, sights and sounds crank up with each hour of the day and
the longer you’re here, the more there is to see. Every morning we
find somewhere for a feast of menemen (Turkish-style scrambled
eggs), crusty bread, fresh tomatoes, tahini and Turkish coffee
before setting off with loose plans of sightseeing, not returning
until late in the evening with feet blistered by the steep streets
and our misjudged footwear.

Whenever possible, we climb up to roof terraces to take in the
city below. It is a rolling landscape of chipped, palatial
buildings, sun-faded rooftops linked by flapping washing lines,
with over 3,000 mosques making up the domed horizon across seven
hills. Reminiscent of the famous Grand Bazaar in the Fatih
district, the city’s endless maze of streets overwhelms us, each
one more heaped with treasures than the last. Yet as we watch
neighbours gathering on chairs outside their front doors, meeting
for coffee or crossing the street to greet each other by pressing
their temples together, the picture seems to come together. In
these small moments Istanbul can feel like a village made up of
sprawling districts and sun-dappled side streets, as layered,
addictive and devourable as a freshly baked tray of baklava.



Beyoğlu

The echoes of Istanbul’s centuries-old history are felt most
easily in Beyoğlu, a sprawling neighbourhood filled with
distinctive districts where elegant Greek orthodox churches and
leafy residential streets take up residence beside fish markets,
street art, old-school lokantas and heaving boulevards, with the
many- threaded web of Taksim Square at the heart. It is also home
to some of the city’s best boutique hotels, including the Istanbul
outpost of the Soho House group.

Over at Tomtom Suites, bright, contemporary bedrooms occupy a
former Franciscan nunnery, while at Adahan Istanbul, soothingly
simple rooms and a panoramic rooftop are housed in a grand
19th-century apartment building. We head to Istanbul Modern for an
exhibition tracing the Turkish photographer Ara Güler’s “Footsteps
in Istanbul”. Nicknamed “The Eye of Istanbul”, Güler takes
photographs that show a mid-century world of street cafés, belching
boats and busy markets – stills of a city that, in many ways, has
remained unchanged.

We bypass the glittering bevy of high-end restaurants on our
first night and instead head to Canım Ciğerim, where our plastic
street-side table is filled with plates of fresh parsley, mint,
sliced lemon, pickled onions and red-hot skewers of chicken and
liver, ready to be heaped into thin flatbreads. We inhale every
last speck so fast that the owner and his friends give us a nod of
respect (and quite possibly disbelief) as we pay up.



Karaköy

Located within Beyoğlu, Karaköy is the neighbourhood we find
ourselves returning to again and again, swallowed up in its
patchwork of cobbled streets, where cats snooze in doorways and the
city’s obsession with round-the-clock café culture hits its peak.
Its Byzantine-era port explodes with life, from fishermen and
ferries to tiny seafood stalls lining the water.

We follow our noses several times to Güllüoğlu, where arguably
the city’s best baklava is made. Glistening pans of freshly baked,
nut-filled filo pastry occupy every corner of this bakery. Ignoring
the looming sugar crash, we order a few varieties and wash them
down with ayran, the salted yogurt drink locals crave when
temperatures start to rise.

Young creatives fill Unter, an industrial-style bar on one
of Karaköy’s busiest backstreets, while nearby café-cum-art space
İlmisimya heaves late into the night. We also pay a visit to the
fish market down by the port, where a fisherman hands me a slick,
flapping anchovy and bellows with laughter as I try to contain it
within the palm of my hand.



Along with a swell of coffee shops, outlets such as A Hidden Bee, a mindful store and design studio run by
Aylin Erel, and Bey, a clothing and accessories shop run by a
brother-and-sister team, show where Karaköy’s reputation as a
hipster haven comes from. Housed inside a grand former bank, SALT
is a contemporary gallery and library with sweeping city views from
its café.

Vintage shops, tattoo studios and concept stores (Vitruta
is particularly lovely) can be found beside casual fine-dining
restaurants such as Yeni Lokanta. Recently listed as one of the
world’s 50 best restaurants, it serves seasonal dishes flooded with
Mediterranean flavours. We spend hours inhaling meat-stuffed
dumplings, sumac beetroots and pumpkin panna cotta.


Kadıköy-Moda

From Karaköy we hop on a boat over to Kadıköy-Moda one morning,
passing over to the city’s Asian side. “The European side is more
built-up – there are more galleries, shops, hotels and big tourist
sites. The Asian side is more residential. I think there’s more
heart here,” Derin Arıbaş, the co-owner of Basta! Street Food Bar,
tells us, as he fills our table with reimagined Turkish classics
such as dürüm (wraps) with gourmet fillings including eight-hour
slow-cooked rib and smoked chicken, with a cold turnip brine juice
to cut through the fat.

Kadıköy-Moda has made a name for itself as a hipster hub in
recent times, but the appeal here comes from its well-trodden tea
houses, barber shops and bakeries. After lunch, Derin and co-owner
Kaan Sakarya walk us through the local food market where they buy
most of their produce. They point out their favourite butcher, a
pickle shop stacked with golden jars, spice stalls and a bakery
where giant flatbreads bubble on hot plates.

We dip into Story Coffee before enjoying our
second breakfast of the day at Naan, a bakery that attracts a cool
local clientele with its sourdough and bagels. Bina on Kadife
Street (also known as Bar Street) is a four-storey hub with a bar,
restaurant and music venue, while independent films are screened at
the long-standing Rexx Cinema down the road.



Balat

“This is where we’d live,” we agree, less than five minutes into
walking the sleepy, rainbow-splashed streets of this traditional
Jewish quarter in the waterside Fatih district. We start with lunch
at Forno, a brick-lined neighbourhood eatery where we
demolish wood-fired pide and ground meat lahmacun (thin Turkish
pizza) with sliced tomatoes, lemon juice and a bowl of iced
yoghurt. Tiled, airy corner café Cooklife Balat is a favourite for
craft coffee close to the area’s ceramic ateliers, vintage shops
and concept stores. We wander down a few of the backstreets laced
with Turkish flags and bougainvillea, passing by trucks full of
watermelons, decades-old sweet shops, old-school barbershops and
one particularly proud baker, who beckons us over to show us a loaf
of bread the size of a suitcase.

Cihangir

The smoky, dimly lit bars are a good starting point when it
comes to exploring this famously bohemian district. Its narrow
streets are home to overflowing antique shops, traditional Turkish
hammams and all-day outdoor cafés populated by local artists,
writers and actors. Istanbul is, we happily discover, a very late-
rising city and Cihangir doesn’t crank into action until well past
midday, making an early morning stroll through its streets and a
visit to the Cihangir Mosque (which happens to have the best views
of the Bospherous) a surprisingly peaceful experience. We loop back
later to sample a few late-night cafés (tea is a 24-hour pastime
here) before heading to Geyik Coffee Roastery & Cocktail Bar,
where neighbours sip whiskey sours and spill out onto the
pavement.

HOW TO GET THERE

Pegasus Airlines flies from London Stansted to Istanbul Sabiha
Gökçen up to four times a day from £180 return, with connecting
flights to Turkey and beyond. Flights are also available from
Manchester. To book, download the Pegasus App or visit flypgs.com