Destination Golf Turkey 2015 2015 | Page 18

guidebooks for Istanbul will now lead you to a wide range of unique regional cuisines and restaurants with hints of Balkan, Caucasian and Middle Eastern fusion. Turkish cuisine is a new adventure. International visitors, for their part, enthusiastically sought something different, creating new markets for the middle Eastern-influenced kebabs of southeast Anatolia and the rib-sticking soul food of the Black Sea area in the north. It is to Anatolia that the new foodies looked for inspiration, to the keşkek Destination Golf Turkey | Page 16 stews, mantı dumplings and gozleme pastries. Keskek should be prepared on summer nights when a ceremonial bull is slaughtered, cooked overnight and eaten next day with wheat. It was the first Turkish dish to be placed on the UNESCO culinary heritage list, alongside Turkish coffee. Tourists don’t have to leave the street for an exciting culinary experience. They need just turn to the ice-cream and pastry wafers sold around the city. Many of the vendors are street performers in their own right. Some are even stars on YouTube. They operate at all hours. If New York is the city that never sleeps, Istanbul is definitely the city that never stops serving food. Traditional snacks are to be seen, smelled, heard and, of course, tasted on nearly every street corner of the city. And the kings of the kebab stall will still be thinking local, well able to debate which part of Turkey produces the best-tasting lamb. Coffee is a central part of the story. And yet, despite introducing Turkish coffee to Europe, the Turks still remain one of the world’s greatest drinkers of tea. The 500 years of prohibition under the Ottomans did not affect the taste for alcohol, either. The standard beers such as Efes, a German Pilsener style beer which has 80 percent of the market, are universally available along with other foreign labels. Wines are now produced in seven Turkish regions, mainly in Marmara and Thrace, Central Anatolia, and the Aegean coastal region. Indigenous white grapes, such as Nemir, Narince, and Sultana, and red grapes, such as Bogazkere, Karasakiz, Calkarasi, Oküzgozü and the Cal Karası variety, are widely used. The best known brands are Doluca, Kavaklidere, Pammukale and Mey Gida. Raki, a grape pomace distillate flavored with anise seed, and nicknamed ‘lamb’s milk’ by enthusiastic waiters, is presented as an after dinner digestif. It turns white when water is added. An ever popular drink in Turkey, it is also seriously strong!