Category: turkey

Postcard from Istanbul, Turkey: Exploring traditional and imported flavors

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Above photo: The handsome copper-domed grill above is located in Zebeyir Ocakbasi in the Beyoglu neighborhood. Ocakbasis are meat-centric open-grill restaurants which, like meyhanes, offer meze and alcoholic beverages.

If you long to imbibe a bit of alcohol with your food in Istanbul, the safest bet is to look for an ocakbasi or a meyhane. Meyhane is derived from mey meaning wine and hane meaning house – a tavern. Meyhanes have existed for centuries around the port of Istanbul, but tolerance of them swings depending on who rules the country.

The 17th century was also marked by a vicious cycle of banning and then legalizing the meyhane. As Kocu (Resad Ekrem Kocu, 1905-1975) wrote: ‘Sultan Ahmet I (1590-1617) prohibited the use of alcohol in July 1613, and also closed all meyhane and their guild. But, as a contemporary historian later on wrote, “As human nature is inclined towards depravity and evil, soon people were back to their drinking habits.”‘”

“Joie de Vivre – A History of Istanbul Meyhanes,” Yavuz Sac and Tan Morgul,” Gastromondiale, March 3, 2024

I have no idea whether it is by law or not, but there are blocks lined with meyhanes one after another, and the same is true of ocakbasis. Meyhanes offer a selection of traditional meze dishes and seafood in a simple setting.

They attract an unlikely trio of customers: thirsty tourists like us, young people at night and tables of older males who gather to sip coffee or raki together. Raki is made from the dregs of grapes left in the winepress that are distilled twice and flavored with aniseed.

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Postcard from Istanbul, Turkey: ‘Mea culpa,’ admits a wine-swilling trespasser

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Above: Racks of wine inside Beyoglu Saraphanesi

A full wine rack in a restaurant in Istanbul became a welcome site for determining where we would eat. If you are a teetotaler, dining options are more plentiful with much lower price points.

Of course, this makes sense. Ninety-nine percent of the population in Turkey is Muslim, a religion that bans the consumption of alcohol. Intoxicants are viewed by many as “abominations of Satan’s handiwork.”

This doesn’t mean you personally are forbidden from partaking; it means that those of us with a certain type of thirst must work to locate restaurants willing to pay the high license fees to offer beer, wine and cocktails. With its Muslim majority, Turkey’s steep sin tax receives high approval ratings. Why not tax those foreign visitors clogging your streets and your young people who already are over-influenced by western culture?

…travel, is flight and pursuit in equal measure. It is both the desire to leave home and the passion to find something new, to pick up stakes and discover who you are in a different landscape and culture….

You are both somebody and nobody, often merely a spectator. I always felt in my bones that wherever I went, I was an alien. That I could not presume or expect much hospitality… that wherever I was, I had no business there and had to justify my intrusion by writing about what I heard. Most travel… can be filed under the heading ‘Trespassing.'”

“The Hard Reality American Expats Quickly Learn,” Paul Theroux, New York Times, January 5, 2025

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2024: More than 16,000 pages in 49 novels

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With a talent for losing myself in a novel accompanied by absolutely no capabilities for recalling the name of the author or title, I love using Goodreads to record those for me. The website also tidily bundles your reads up at the end of the year. This look back reminded me that the first book I completed this past year was also both the longest, with 736 pages, and among my favorites – The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.

Other books that that rang five-star for me for varying reasons were: Peace Like a River by Leif Unger; The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff; Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park; The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng; Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov; The Turtle House by Amanda Churchill; The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez; Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia; Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez; My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You I’m Sorry by Fredrik Backman; Hard by a Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili; Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin; All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker; and Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang.

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