What to eat in Istanbul

In Istanbul you choose food by the hour: a Turkish breakfast in the morning, a table covered in small dishes; at midday fish in bread by the piers or a ready dish from behind the glass at an esnaf lokantası; in the evening meze with rakı at a meyhane. Each has its own district.

Serpme kahvaltı arrives all at once for the whole table: cheese, olives, tomato and cucumber, clotted cream with honey, tahini with grape molasses, the hot pepper paste acuka, eggs or menemen, and tea that keeps being topped up. There is a whole street for it — Kahvaltıcılar Sokağı in Beşiktaş, one café after another; it is packed at weekends, so go early on a weekday. Without time for a table, breakfast is a simit, the sesame ring from a cart, with tea.

• Balık ekmek — grilled mackerel in bread with onion and salad, from the stalls at Eminönü and Karaköy on either side of the Galata Bridge, for €2.70–4.60.
• Esnaf lokantası — a kitchen with ready dishes in trays behind glass: beans (kuru fasulye) with rice, soups, vegetables and meat in sauce. You point, and lunch comes to €9–10 per person.
• Midye dolma — mussels stuffed with spiced rice, with lemon, from stalls in the evening. They are sold by the piece, so you eat while the seller counts the shells.

3 daysEminönü, Karaköy and Kadıköy — where they sit in the three-day plan:Istanbul in 3 days →

Kebab is not döner

What Europe sells as kebab is döner here, fast food off the spit. Kebab is a grilled dish eaten at a table, named after the city it comes from: Adana is hot, Urfa mild. İskender comes from Bursa — thinly sliced döner over pieces of pide, with tomato sauce and yoghurt, doused in hot butter when it reaches the table. If you order one dish for the first time, order that: it is the furthest thing from a döner sandwich.

Where to stayThe districts where people actually eat at night:Where to stay in Istanbul →

At a meyhane the cold meze are not ordered from a menu: the waiter brings a tray — haydari, hummus, topik, marinated fish — and you choose from it. Rakı goes with the food, cut with water, which turns it milky. Meyhanes are thick on the ground in Nevizade, behind İstiklal, and in Karaköy. If you do not drink, have ayran or şalgam with the meze — fermented black carrot and turnip juice, salty and sour.