Foodies in two continents

We joined a couple of cool locals today for a food tour across across two continents.
First thing we did was jump on a ferry and cross over to Anatolia - the Asian side of the city which gave us a great view of the ruins of the Byzantine sea walls and the sites in Old Town. (Pretty cool if you’ve spent the last few years listening to a podcast on the history of the Roman/Byzantine Empire 😜🤓).

Like every food tour we came hungry and our first stop didn’t disappoint when we sat down to sample a genuine Turkish doner kebab!
A bit different from what we have in Aus though as it was just meat and a few pickles and hot chips.
No “garlic, chilli, humous, tabouli”….it hides the flavour of the meat we were told; only dodgy operators with low quality meat do that to hide/add flavour. 😳🤔
A that wasn’t the only weird difference at our first stop. It seems that “American style burgers” are very popular in with the new generations in Türkiye - but when the sauce is on the OUTSIDE of the burger, we weren’t so sure. Still it was pretty tasty but it was time to move on.

As we walked we chatted with Ahmet and Eren about the history of the city, the locals now, politics, good bars, football (a.k.a. soccer), how through a flare at a ref leads to a 2 year ban from stadiums (Eren 🤦‍♂️), and how they spent their days.
They had made some changes to the normal tour so that Kylie actually got something to eat - they were polite enough to keep checking if Kylie might just like to try liver or fish just in case though 😜
But they scored points when we stop for a Turkish rice and chickpea dish called pilaf which was a buttery/nutty fat rice. Kylie took mental notes so we could pass on the recipe to our University daughter 😆
Dale was stoked with this place though as he got to sample the local ayran. A salty goats yogurt/milk drink that he tried years ago with a mentor at work who was Turkish. Turns out only Dale was a fan in the end though 🤣

…to be continuedRead more