There are many great things about Turkey but one of the biggest highlights is the food. Turkish cuisine is fresh and full of vegetables, spices, perfectly cooked meat and excellent fish. It can be tasty and quite healthy (though people with a sweet tooth and/or an appetite for all things greasy will find many things to their liking).
Every street of Istanbul is lined with dozens of eateries of all kinds,. Knowing this, we worried that we wouldn’t go to the right places during our short time in the city. Not wanting to miss out on any of the good stuff, we decided to book a food tour with Istanbul Eats/ Culinary Backstreets. Best idea ever!
Choosing which our food tour was tough as each of them seemed so interesting.Out of the four choices, we picked the ‘Two markets, two continents’ tour,which was going to bring us through the small fish market in Karakoy, then on to Kadikoy on the Asian side of Istanbul. We didn’t know what to expect, other than the fact that the reviews on TripAdvisor were beyond good (many people named this tour as the top experience of their trip).
Boy were they right. I won’t go into details about the tour itself, other than the fact that we spent a lovely day with two friendly couples and an excellent guide, Ugur. I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves. Keep in mind that we ate all of this over the course of 6 hours. It was a large amount of food but we couldn’t refuse anything and everything we tasted was excellent.
Kaymak (clotted cream)
Simit (turkish bagel)
Restaurant tucked away in a building
Pastirma (Turkish pastrami)
Karakoy Gulluoglu a legendary baklava bakery
Serving midye dolma (stuffed mussels)
Fresh salmon
Fish at the market
Fresh nuts, only the best ones available
Fried sardines with lemon and arugula
Mouth watering baklava
Turkish coffee
Lahmajun preparation, every employee has their specific step to follow
Ayran
If I remember correctly, this is called tantuni
Kokorec
Tripe soup with tons of garlic
Tel kadayif with Kaymak (shredded wheat, honey, pistachio, clotted cream)
Meat borek
Cheese borek
A storytelling home 
Hey, we were on this same tour with you and your brother!! Also from Canada, if you recall, we lost all our pictures, you kindly emailed me some of yours…. well, we managed to retrieve some of them! Loved seeing your pictures and your write up here! Great memories, loved the tour too.
Hi Kirsten! Of course I remember. I still have fond memories of the tour! A few weeks ago I hosted a turkish food party and made some of the recipes that we tasted on the tour. I couldn’t replicate them completely, but it was still a great success and I think I convinced my friends to go to Turkey one day!