What to eat in Istanbul
A culinary checklist for Istanbul: from crispy simit and balık ekmek to buttery İskender kebap, Gaziantep-style baklava, and Turkish coffee.

[ ] Try balık ekmek
    Istanbul's iconic fish sandwich featuring grilled mackerel stuffed into half a crusty white loaf with raw onions, lettuce, and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Skip the touristy ornamental boats at Eminönü and head to the street stalls behind the Karaköy fish market, where vendors debone the fillets on order.
[ ] Try lahmacun
    An ultra-thin, blistered flatbread baked in a wood-fired stone oven, topped with minced lamb or beef, crushed tomatoes, bell peppers, garlic, and parsley. It is never eaten flat: squeeze fresh lemon over the top, scatter parsley and sumac onions, roll it tightly into a wrap, and eat with your hands.
[ ] Try İskender kebap
    Paper-thin shavings of vertically roasted döner meat layered over warm cubes of pide bread, smothered in rich tomato gravy, and finished with sizzling brown butter poured tableside. It comes accompanied by thick sheep's milk yogurt and a charred green pepper.
[ ] Try kokoreç
    Spiced lamb offal wrapped tightly in intestines and roasted horizontally over glowing charcoal embers. The cooked roll is chopped finely with cleavers on a flat-top grill, tossed with oregano, tomatoes, and red pepper flakes, then scooped into toasted bread.
[ ] Try midye dolma
    Plump mussels stuffed with aromatic rice cooked with currants, pine nuts, allspice, and black pepper. The street vendor prises open the shell, snaps off the top half to use as a spoon, douses the warm filling with lemon juice, and hands it directly to you.
[ ] Try mercimek çorbası
    A velvety red lentil soup cooked with onions, carrots, and dried spearmint in a gentle broth. It is universally served piping hot with lemon wedges, smoky pul biber pepper flakes, and an endless basket of crusty white bread for dipping.
[ ] Try Istanbul simit
    A circular braided bread dipped in grape molasses (pekmez) bath and thoroughly coated in toasted sesame seeds before hitting a high-heat oven. The result is a deeply browned, nutty, crunchy exterior encasing a chewy, airy crumb.
[ ] Try menemen
    The crown jewel of Turkish breakfast: soft-scrambled eggs gently folded into a simmering sauce of sweet green peppers, peeled ripe tomatoes, and cultured butter. It arrives sizzling in a traditional double-handled copper pan (sahan) meant for dipping crusty bread directly into the center.
[ ] Try kuru fasulye
    Large white beans slow-simmered for hours in copper or earthenware pots with tomato paste, butter, and slices of cured spiced beef (pastırma). The beans turn creamy and tender while yielding a thick, deeply savory and rich sauce.
[ ] Try işkembe çorbası
    A rich, creamy tripe soup bound with a delicate emulsion of egg yolks, yogurt, and lemon juice (terbiye). It is served with two essential condiments on the table: a potent crushed garlic-vinegar mixture and melted butter infused with fiery red pepper flakes, added to taste.
[ ] Try çiğ köfte
    A spicy kneaded paste made of fine bulgur rubbed for hours with dark Urfa isot peppers, tomato paste, ground walnuts, pomegranate molasses, and fresh herbs. Squeezed by hand to leave distinctive finger indentations, it is wrapped in crisp iceberg lettuce or thin lavaş with a douse of lemon.
[ ] Try Gaziantep-style baklava
    Up to forty micro-thin layers of hand-rolled phyllo pastry stuffed with vivid green, early-harvest antep pistachios, baked golden and steeped in boiling sugar syrup and clarified sheep butter. Authentic baklava should crackle crisply when bitten upside down against the roof of your mouth, without being cloying.
[ ] Try künefe
    A sizzling dessert of shredded kadayıf pastry crisped in butter around a core of fresh, unsalted, stretchy Hatay cheese. Served straight from the fire on shallow aluminium pans, it is doused in warm simple syrup, dusted with crushed pistachios, and crowned with dense clotted buffalo cream (kaymak).
[ ] Try Maraş dondurma
    Dense, chewy ice cream made from fatty goat's milk, mastic gum resin, and wild orchid root powder (salep). The unique ingredients give it an elastic, taffy-like texture that resists melting and is traditionally sliced with a knife and eaten with a fork.
[ ] Try fresh lokum
    Delicate confections made by boiling starch and sugar into a silky, translucent gel without gelatin. Authentic Istanbul versions are studded with double-roasted pistachios, pomegranate reductions, or mastic resin, lightly dusted with powdered sugar or shredded coconut.
[ ] Drink Turkish tea
    Strong, mahogany-colored black tea harvested from the Black Sea slopes of Rize, brewed using a stacked double kettle (çaydanlık) where steam keeps the concentrate simmering. It is served in tulip-shaped glasses (ince belli) perched on small saucers with sugar cubes.
[ ] Drink authentic Turkish coffee
    Pulverized coffee simmered slowly with cold water in a copper pot (cezve) over hot sand or open embers until a thick, rich crema forms. It is poured unfiltered into espresso-sized cups and served alongside a glass of cold water and a cube of Turkish delight.
[ ] Try fresh frothy ayran
    A cooling savory drink made simply of whole-milk yogurt, spring water, and sea salt. At quality kebab houses and casual cantinas, always seek out açık ayran—draft, house-churned yogurt beverage ladled cold with a frothy, billowy head of foam.
[ ] Drink rakı at a traditional meyhane
    A 45% grape pomace spirit twice-distilled with green aniseed. It is traditionally served in tall, slender glasses mixed roughly half-and-half with chilled water—turning opalescent milky-white (known as 'lion's milk')—and topped with an ice cube.

Checklist from Unload: https://unloads.me/c/food-istanbul