So you think that you had spend enough time with İstanbul’s greatest excessively crowded plus ultra touristical areas and don’t know what to do, this article is just for you. As a native istanbulite (we’re calling ourselves like that) trust me we are rearly rare; i would like to give you some information how to stick to figure in our cosmopolit daily life.With this article i will introduce the time line with the daylight. Cause the other part is completely different story. Istanbul is the city which literally never sleeps …
The only thing you should understand about our city that if you are living in Istanbul we never stabilize one way of manner in daily life. We are bohemians in the morning, american take-away at lunch, luxury in evenings and TGIF at all nights. Also, this arrangment can change due to if it’s weekend or week day. For example we usually start a day with a huge breakfast unlike other europeans and spend hours with it especially at the weekends. Tea, bread, olive, cheese and our special egg cook ‘’menemen’’ is a must with a lot of calories no matter what. We can never feel ourselves satisfied with a single croissant and a bit butter. Generally a prize for a good turkish breakfast menu is about 20-25 turkish liras. If it’s more than 25, be sure that the place is not overprized for it’s luxury. You can enjoy your breakfast in many locations but the best ones are in Ortaköy,Beşiktaş and Karaköy for european side and of course Kadıköy and Fenerbahçe in asian side with great bosphorous view.
And here is your trick, location and see view is pretty important for us (we are in love with the sea) so if a restaurant is closer to the sea, it means it’s better. Before you enter the restaurant ask prize for breakfast, if you are more than 2 people, try to make a bargain. We often start to have breakfast like 10-11 am at weekends and earlier in weekdays. Almost every restaurant will serve you breakfast till 1 pm so don’t need to panic if you are the sleeper of the day. There for, you should be in the restaurant between 9-10 o’clock to find a place. Every restaurant at the locations that i count up, will be full at weekends. At the end, don’t forget to drink your turkish coffe after the breakfast !
If you really want to get along with Turkish people, you have to get used to drink galons of tea and turkish coffe in one day. They are our best parts of tradition and hospitality but nothing can be worse more than not well cooked coffe or tea. For the best tea and coffe everybody has some secret places, so do i. If you rearly want to meet new taste of coffe’s from all around the World, you direction is Karaköy. Don’t lose your time with international big coffe market. Choose ally roads and explore. If you want to stay local, your direction is Kadıköy. Go up from the see level to Moda, and enter the first coffe shop that you face. So, the trick is, most of the turkish coffe shops have unique and different names but most of the old and good ones always start with “Kuru Kahveci” and end up with “Efendi” means master.
Let’s continue with lunch. After our large breakfast, you can think that it will take some time for us to get hungry again but you are wrong. Turkish people don’t eat to live, we live for eating more and more. Our lunch menu normally formed with a soup, a maindish and a desert . The avarege prize is like 20-30 turkish lira but of course it depends on restaurant quality. As i sad before, you can also have a take away/fast lunch from the little restaurants that we called ‘’Büfe’’. They are generally very cheap and fast. You can recognize them with döner stands and fast food images. There will be a lot of options of hamburgers, regular burger too but if you want to make it in Istanbul style, my suggestion is “Islak Hamburger” means wet burger, a hamburger with a lot of tomato sauce. You can see them in glass showcases in many Büfe. Beside that you can eat “Pilav-tavuk” , (rice and chicken )in many places, especially in Kadıköy. You can have a quick lunch like that for 10-20 turkish liras with beverage plus frech fries. If you want something interesting, try “Kumpir” which is a traditional dish, patato mash with many different ingridients over. Everything that i counted can be prepared and served very fast and they are so delicious. Brace yourself. Istanbul is always filled up with limitless possiblities. Don’t be scary and discover.
