World Travel 2013-2014, Delicious Turkish Food

Well here we are again. Another slightly obsessive food post. While Takeshi and I did enjoy Turkish food, we have now reached the point in our trip where all I could think was “OMG I want a kitchen!”. So we found a place in Istanbul and Goreme where we could cook and have a few meals back at our home away from home.

That said, we still did get to try out a fair variety of different foods while we were in Turkey (helps that we spent so long here as well…).

Turkish Breakfast

We went with a hostels which had breakfast included, and while some of them were buffet (and some were not) they were all a pretty standard Turkish breakfast. So what does a Turkish breakfast include? Typically there will be at least two types of olives, cheese, bread, jam and butter, cucumber, tomato and tea and coffee. Personally, I quite liked having the tomato and cucumber with my breakfast – yum!

Turkish Breakfast, Bodrum, Turkey

Turkish Breakfast, Bodrum, Turkey

Drinks

We tried Greek coffee which we didn’t like, and then we tried Turkish coffee. Also didn’t really like it either. Personally, I didn’t find it as bitter as the Greek coffee, but it’s a bit strange for me to have the grounds in the cup. You have to be careful not to mix the coffee and allow the grounds to settle – and regardless of my explanations of the brewing process and warnings, Takeshi still ended up drinking his grounds. His excuse was he was chasing the last drop of coffee. Needless to say, we only had one cup of Turkish coffee…

Turkish Coffee, Selcuk, Turkey

Turkish Coffee, Selcuk, Turkey

Tea is actually a lot more popular in Turkey than coffee, and you can definitely see it on the streets. I don’t think I ever saw a shopkeeper or gentlemen sitting and eating without either Ayran (a yogurt drink) or a glass of tea. The apple tea is incredible (provided it’s actual apple tea, and not the powdered kind), and the normal tea is typically drunk with a reasonable amount of sugar which is similar to Morocco. Personally, I think I like the sugared mint tea of Morocco, or the apple tea over the regular tea.

Turkish tea, Bodrum, Turkey

Turkish tea, Bodrum, Turkey

Desserts

Lastly, where would we be without the desserts. We didn’t eat much in terms of desserts in Turkey, except for a few pieces of baklava.

Ah baklava. So unhealthy for me and yet so delicious. I am happy that my sweet tooth has definitely diminished since our pastry overload in France (totally don’t regret that though…), but even with a less strong desire for sweets we had to try some baklava while we were in Turkey. So what is a girl to do but research online a good baklava store. Turns out we had one in the Karakoy area we were staying in at Istanbul that was only a few streets away so off we went. We picked out four different kinds of baklava, which actually turned out to be three different kinds of pistachio and the chocolate baklava (for something different).

Loved the pistachio flavour and there were differences between the three different baklavas in terms of syrup and subtle flavour (really, they were different… that’s why I picked three pistachio pieces…). No idea what any of them were called though so lets just enjoy the picture…

Baklava, Istanbul, Turkey

Baklava, Istanbul, Turkey

And here we go, a few more pictures of some of the food we enjoyed while we were in Turkey. In general, I found the food in Turkey to be better than Greece. Similar types of food (doner, gyros etc) but a lot less salty and a much richer flavour than what we experienced in Greece. Highly recommend trying lots of the food if you’re in Turkey!

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