The ubiquitous Turkish gozleme stand at festivals and markets around Australia has become a bit of a running joke. What, for instance, are they doing at a Chinese New Year festival? Or at the Night Noodle Markets? Do they legitimately have a place at the French Food Fair? However out of place they may be at various festivals, there’s no denying that gozleme is freaking amazing and it was a must-have while in Turkey.
We were drawn into Hala Manti ve Ev Yemekleri Salonu (what a mouthful!) in Istanbul for dinner one night as we saw an old Turkish lady making gozleme in the restaurant on a proper gozleme pan like this. That was reason enough for us to go in! We started with a drink each, ordering a lemonade in the hopes that it would be house-made. Oh well, uludag is as good a soft drink as any!
K ordered the Lentil Soup – again! It was much the same as the othersoups he’d been having during our time in Istanbul, but this one benefited from the addition of a few extra herbs and spices for more flavour.
I wanted the Stuffed Peppers with Rice, as we hadn’t yet had any Turkish dolma during our time in Istanbul – a travesty! Unfortunately these didn’t quite live up to expectations, as the peppers were quite cold and slimy after refrigeration. While I can understand that this is a dish often served pre-prepared, there’s a difference between cold and cool dolmas. Refrigerator-cold is not the way it should be served!
Deciding we needed more vegetables, we also ordered the Meatballs with Mixed Vegetables – not realising of course, that ‘vegetables’ would be limited to potatoes, carrots and what looked like tinned peas. This was a bit disappointing – while I understand that this style of dish isn’t conducive to using fresh green leafy vegetables, using vegetables like zucchini, eggplant, beans or capsicum could have worked just as well and been a bit healthier as well.
This was the main point of our visit to Hala though – a Lamb Gozleme. Thankfully this lived up to expectations – the thinnest and crispiest flatbread stuffed with rich savoury spiced lamb mince. This is the reason why people visit Hala, for the simple but delicious gozleme, not for any of the other filler dishes on the menu. I’ve learned my lesson!
Visit Hala by all means if you’re in Istanbul – just don’t make the mistake of ordering anything but gozleme! You can order it takeaway as a snack, but be prepared to wait for a little while as there is a high demand for the services of the one old Turkish woman responsible for making each and every gozleme.
Hala Manti ve Ev Yemekleri Salonu is located at 26 Cukurlu Cesme Sokak, Beyoglu, Istanbul.
I have tendencies towards vegetarianism. While I love bacon and foie gras too much to ever become vegetarian, it’s not unusual for half of our home-cooked meals in Australia to be vegetarian-friendly as I often find that eating too much red meat leaves me with a heavy feeling in my stomach.
Preferring to have less red meat in your diet does make it difficult when you’re travelling in a country like Turkey though! Doner kebaps are on every street corner, lamb durums are a go-to fast and cheap food, and most main meals in restaurants will consist of giant chunks of meat and bread/rice with a minuscule side salad as an afterthought. It’s not a particularly vegetarian-friendly dining destination.
Going to a cafe is your best bet for a lighter meal, and K and I dropped into Marmara Cafe in the Beyoglu area of Istanbul (close to where we were staying) for a much lighter meal – for him because he was feeling sick and had lost his appetite, and for me because I needed something that wouldn’t sit as heavily in my stomach.
Lentil Soup, 4 Turkish Lira
K ordered the Lentil Soup, which was unfortunately not quite as well-spiced and tasty as the one he had ordered at Ortaklar Iskender Kebap. It did seem quite a bit creamier though, which makes me suspect that they bulk the soup out with a spot of cream – not great if you’re lactose intolerant like K!
Toast with salami and kasar cheese, 5.50 Turkish Lira
A classic toastie is a go-to comfort food for when we’re sick, so K also ordered the Toast with Salami and Kasar Cheese. Kasar cheese is usually made of sheep’s milk, which makes it quite a bit stronger in taste and flavour than our usual cow’s milk cheeses. This made it a particularly excellent toastie for a sick person who was losing their ability to taste – the stronger-flavoured cheese and meaty salami managed to cut through to his tastebuds. For vegetarians, you can skip the salami and just have a kasar cheese toastie which is still delicious!
Jacket Potato with Chicken, 12.50 Turkish Lira
After seeing other diners eating baked potatoes, I had to order one. There’s nothing better than a hot roasted potato! While I ordered the Jacket Potato with Chicken, there are vegetarian options available as well. This was a real monster of a meal, topped with marinated roasted chicken, butter, kasar cheese, Russian salad, Italian salad, corn kernels, pickle slices, fresh green peas, sliced sausage, olives, red cabbage, mushrooms and bulgur salad. There really was just too much going on, I would have enjoyed it even more if they’d only used half the number of ingredients!
Fresh Orange Juice, 3.50 Turkish Lira each
We also ordered two Fresh Orange Juices, which interestingly were delivered to our table well after we received all the other dishes. For a while we thought that they’d actually forgotten about our juices as they really should have come at the start of the meal…oh well, an orange juice is an orange juice! This was actually a particularly sweet glass of OJ, so I suspect they may have sweetened it with some sugar syrup.
If you find yourself sick of eating kebaps and other grilled meats in Istanbul, you can go to Marmara Cafe in Beyoglu near Taksim Square for a more cafe-esque meal. Do your digestive system a service and have a lighter meal!
Marmara Cafe is located at Evliya Çelebi, in Istanbul.
As far as I can recall, Ortaklar Iskender Kebap in the Cemberlitas district of Istanbul was the first restaurant that K and I visited more than once in the whole time we were travelling through Europe.
This was partly due to the fact that the area of Cemberlitas in Istanbul is notoriously touristy. It becomes particularly wearying to walk through the streets looking for lunch when pushy maitre d’s/touts are accosting you from either side trying to convince you to dine in their restaurant. When you find a genuine restaurant in Istanbul without a pushy tout out the front, it’s truly worth its weight in gold. Ortaklar Iskender Kebap was that Holy Grail for us.
The menu is particularly tourist-friendly, offering pictures of every dish (it’s a pretty small menu!) with the name of the dish next to the picture in four different languages – Turkish, English, Russian and German. The Russian and German tourism market is very big for Turkey, though that may change over the coming months given the tense relationship between Russia and Turkey at the moment.
Ortaklar offers limitless free Turkish bread and a delicious chilli capsicum dip to all diners – a dangerous proposition! The bread is delivered to your table, still warm from the large oven downstairs. Try not to eat it all though I know it’s tempting – portions are generous here and you’ll find it difficult to finish your meal even if you don’t fill up on Turkish bread beforehand.
Camlica and Fresh Orange Juice (3 and 7 Turkish Lira)
Fresh orange juice is a must when you’re in Istanbul. There are street stalls everywhere selling fresh orange juice, and all restaurants do as well. In a food region renowned for their meat and carb combinations, making sure you get every opportunity to get some vitamins from fruit and vegetables is very important! If you find regular soft drink too sweet, you’ll also like Turkish Camlica, a lemonade that’s not quite as sweet as the usual Sprite or 7-Up but still has the refreshing bubbly citrus taste.
Mushroom Casserole, 13 Turkish Lira
Kebaps feature heavily on Ortaklar’s menu but they also offer more home-style casserole dishes as well, so we ordered the Mushroom Casserole to try. Baked mushrooms, onions and peas in a thick tomato sauce was simple but delicious. With the addition of some melted cheese on top, this casserole would almost have been Mexican in style! The super savoury sauce was particularly tasty, especially when sopped up with chunks of the aforementioned Turkish bread.
Turkish Special Kebap, 16 Turkish Lira
We finished off this meal with the Turkish Special Kebap, the most elaborate of all the kebaps on their menu. This kebap comes served with the most delicious savoury tomato rice on the side, as well as a big dollop of sour cream and a small salad. The meat inside the Turkish bread is the real winner though – spiced and grilled over charcoal, it has a special smoky flavour that simply can’t be replicated using other cooking methods. This is a particularly filling meal, and K and I were definitely completely stuffed by the time we finished!
On our second visit to Ortaklar, our waiter recognised us and greeted us with a grin, promptly bringing the same delicious bread and dip to our table within minutes before we even ordered.
Fresh Orange Juice (7 Turkish Lira each)
Again, fresh orange juices all around. K opted for an orange juice as well this time rather than a soft drink as he started to feel the early twinges of what would end up being a three-week-long head cold. It’s all about stocking up on that Vitamin C!
Mixed Pide (13 Turkish Lira)
I wanted a pide after seeing the chef make one the day before, so we ordered the Mixed Pide for the opportunity to try a bit of everything. This is three pides in one – one end is a “roast with meat”, there’s cheese in the centre, and vegetarian on the other end. This was the most amazingly crisp pide, with a beautifully crispy brown base. The shape was elegant, and the fillings plentiful and tasty. Forget Italian pizzas, a well-made Turkish pide is where it’s at.
Soup (5 Turkish Lira)
K ordered himself a bowl of the Lentil Soup, a mainstay menu item for many Turkish restaurants – expect to see a lot more lentil soup on this blog over the next week as he ordered bowl after bowl of soup at restaurants to help battle his head cold! I had a taste of this soup and liked the pepperiness of it – I hoped that the bit of spice in the thick hearty soup would help K get over his cold quicker!
Green Salad (6 Turkish Lira)
We finished off our meal with the Green Salad in an attempt to boost our vegetable intake. In hindsight, we would have been better off ordering a dish of cooked vegetables like a vegetable casserole or even eggplant kebap – kitchen practices in Turkey are less meticulous than in Australia, and there were definite spots of dirt on the tomatoes and lettuce that a brief rinse under the tap would have removed. Still, we worked around it, and it was nice to have some super fresh crispy lettuce and salad veggies – a refreshing change!
You always finish a meal at Ortaklar Iskender Kebap with a complimentary glass of Turkish apple tea. We soon learned that apple tea is served everywhere – if you walk into a shop with a clear intent to buy, shopkeepers will invite you to sit down for a cup of hot apple tea before browsing their wares at leisure. If you have to wait to check in to a hotel, you’ll sit down with a cup of apple tea. If you have a break during a visit to a Turkish bath, you’ll sit down with a cup of apple tea.
I became quite addicted to apple tea during our stay in Turkey actually, and am glad to see that T2 stock Turkish Apple Tea for me to continue my addiction when we return to Australia! Note – most Turkish people don’t actually drink apple tea themselves as they drink strong black tea, apple tea is just something they serve to us foreigners!
Ortaklar Iskender Kebap is the rarest of finds – a restaurant in Cemberlitas in Istanbul that relies on its excellent food to draw in the locals day after day (they do a roaring takeaway trade for local workers), rather than on touts outside pulling tourists into the restaurant. Tourists like us are starting to catch on though, so get in quick before it becomes too commercialised!
Ortaklar Iskender Kebap is located at Binbirdirek Mahallesi, Peykhane Caddesi, No 27/A, Fatih, Istanbul.
