ISTANBUL, TURKEY ON OUR OWN (PART 2, Food including Kumkapi Fish markets and seafood restaurants)—May 17-28, 2013

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ISTANBUL, TURKEY ON OUR OWN (PART 2, Food including Kumkapi Fish Markets and Seafood Restaurants)—May 17-28, 2013

Historia Mall

One afternoon we took a taxi to the several floor Historia Mall to look around. It was a very modern mall with upscale shops. Valerie had killed her mouse and we were fairly sure she could get a new one there, which she did. We were surprised to have to walk through a security screening and place our bags/purses through an x-ray machine to enter the mall.

Lots of restaurants were located on the top floor and a grocery store was on the bottom floor. We were looking to find something different to eat for lunch and thought we could find it here. Did find a place that sold large baked potatoes that could be stuffed with all kinds of strange (for us) items like olives, pickles, sliced wieners, raw shredded carrots or red cabbage, and/or hot peppers, topped with a large dollop of both ketchup and mayonnaise. We had ours with butter, cheese, and sour cream (we think as the clerks did not speak English).

Besides a Micky D's, a Pizza Hut and a KFC, all the other restaurants served the exact same food we had had all over Turkey--doners, kabobs, their version of pizza, casseroles, etc. Not a single Chinese, New York hot dog/cheese steak, Thai, Mexican, Greek, or other different ethnic vender like there are in our mall food courts, could be seen.

In the grocery store downstairs we bought drinks and snacks and looked around especially at the produce section and frozen and canned veggies. The market confirmed what we had observed in our trip through Turkey--they do not eat veggies, except eggplant many ways, peppers (we don't care for), cukes (we can't eat), zucchini (only stuffed), tomatoes, a little spinach, occasionally green beans served cold like a salad, and raw shredded carrots and cabbage to put in lettuce salads. No beets, asparagus, celery, broccoli, peas, cooked carrots, cauliflower, summer or winter squash, snap or snow peas, sweet potatoes, even forgetting the more unusual for us to eat, bok choi, spouts, okra, napa or other cabbage, turnips or rutabagas. The frozen food section of the market had 1/2 a frozen open case with bags of peas, tiny okra, a mixed vegetable package, and a number of brands of french fries. The canned fruit and veggies combined took up 1/2 the space the various olive oils did.

Eating Out

For a month every lunch or dinner we ate in a restaurant, we were served a rice/pasta dish, french fries, 2 grilled tomatoes, and a grilled long pepper no matter what the meat was that we ordered. Chicken, beef, sometimes lamb and sometimes fish were on the menu for meats.

One night we walked up the block from our hotel to an Italian restaurant we had spotted thinking there we would get something different--they offered spaghetti, pizza, and a couple other very similar dishes--no veal scaloppini, or linguini, fettuccini, or scampi or any other of my favorite Italian entrees. I had trout (eyes still on and looking at me) and was served the exact same sides. Valerie wasn't feeling too good and just had a bowl of soup.

Another evening after touring the DolmabahcePalace, we had the taxi take us to the Kumkapi area that has fresh fish markets and a good number of adjacent restaurants. On the drive there we passed the old train depot that was the last stop on the famed Orient Express that went from Paris to Istanbul. Several other sights around Istanbul from our various other travels are also included here.

Kumkapi Fish Markets and Restaurants

We exited the taxi and walked around the fish market before we picked out a restaurant and settled in next to the windows to watch the fishing boats and ferries sail along in the Sea of Marmara. I had a meal of whole sea bass that was very good and the usual rice and fries and Valerie had a shrimp casserole cooked of course with tomatoes and peppers.

This seemed to be the way all the casseroles listed on the menus were cooked as we had lamb and beef in the hotel dining room this exact same way. The casseroles came to the table bubbling hot in a flatish oblong dish made we think of terra cotta. We later walked up a street perpendicular to the water that was lined with at least thirty outdoor fish restaurants one up against the other. The only way you could tell where one restaurant stopped and another began, was by the change in the tablecloths and perhaps the chairs. We caught a taxi on a busy street and the driver took us another way through narrow streets back to our hotel.

Breakfast Fare

Since we are staying at the same hotel for these 10 days or so and breakfast is included, we are very tired of their exactly the same, every day, breakfast offerings. Breakfast items on all the buffets have been strange to our tastes here anyway. Olives are a big thing--4-5 different kinds of both black and green stuffed ones plus a bowl of olive paste is put out everywhere. Then fresh tomatoes, cukes, and raw shredded carrots and red cabbage has also been at EVERY breakfast. Eggs are sorta scrambled or hard boiled, cereal is a flake or choc balls, platters of cheeses that are really salty, a pan of cut up wieners plain or in a tomato sauce and a pan of cooked tomato-pepper-egg glop, bowls of soft yogurts, and lentil soup round it off. No pork found in this country, so no sausage, bacon, or ham. But also no hot cereal (which I eat daily), waffles, pancakes, french toast, omelets/soft boiled/or fried eggs, grits, nor hash browns/cottage fries.

Breakfast everywhere was served with several different kinds of rolls as well as some sort of French bread. One kind of roll sometimes had a wiener or olives cooked in it. Some were kind of croissant-like, but not quite like the French type, and others were just round-in-shape, flatish, plain rolls. Valerie did find a sort of bagel occasionally and something that passed for cream cheese, but no lox. Also, we didn't see doughnuts, Danishes, cinnamon buns, sticky buns, coffee cakes/kuliches, panettone (I got addicted to this Italian bread on the cruise), or other fruited breads, nor for that matter, any other kind of breakfast pastry.

General Comments about Food

Valerie and I have spent some time trying to understand why we were unhappy about the food in Turkey. We have come to the conclusion that as good as the food tasted, it was the same ingredients cooked in just a few different ways for both lunch and dinner. At home we eat a variety of foods at a variety of restaurants; Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Greek, Italian, Cuban, Central American, and American. We have some sort of Mexican and Chinese food weekly and none of this was available in Turkey that we saw. I especially missed my veggies and you know if Valerie was looking for them, that the situation was "dire."

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