Back from a whirlwind visit to the city with two new essentials for anyone thinking of travelling to Istanbul. The first is a book, and a website, called Istanbul Eats: Exploring the Culinary Backstreets – a lively canter around the food treats of the city. Lots of my favourites in there, and others I hadn’t taken in – street food, stall food, cubbyholes and restaurants, clearly orgainsed by district. Authors Ansel Mullins and Yigal Schleifer have an infectious enthusiasm for discovering new things, and eating them. Lots of photos, good maps, and all in a book so small you can slide it into your pocket…
The website is at http://istanbuleats.com/
Next essential is Istanbul: The Ultimate Guide by Saffet Emre Tonguç and Pat Yale. These two know their Istanbul like nobody else, and their award-winning new guide is everything it promises to be – thousands of photos, maps, vignettes and snippets of information, taking you into – over and under – everything worth seeing in the wider city.
Both books are available abroad, or you can buy them easily on Istiklal Caddesi, the old Grande Rue de Pera.
Thank you, Jason. These are perfect preparation for that long deferred, at this point practically hypothetical, trip to the city. I’m swiftly becoming incredibly well-informed for a person who’s never been to Istanbul… 🙂 Ah, someday, soon.
Here’s hoping! On the other hand, sometimes places live most vividly in the imagination. Armchair travel is cheap, interesting and relatively safe…!
I always though you find best food places in istanbul by simply asking people for their special places in the area.. this can happen while waiting in aline, taking the ferry and etc. some examples I’ve discovered w this are Ara Kafe and Limon bahcesi in taksim district of istanbul.
Quiet right. Reminds me of a tapas bar on the square in Seville, where a very thin woman was choosing the dishes for a very fat man. I copied everything she ordered, and it was absolutely delicious. But if he was fatter than me, he turned out to be much richer, too. The final bill was like an astringent digestif.