MOUTHWATERING Turkish STREET FOOD in Istanbul, Turkeys Asian Side | AMERICANS Travel to TURKEY 2021

01:21 - We’ve been in Turkey - we’ve been in Istanbul actually for a little over a week now and we did not expect to be here in Turkey in Istanbul on this trip. Yeah the seagulls agree with that So literally we just booked Turkey about four days before we arrived. We had some travel changes and plans. Not gonna get into all that, but we do have some exciting plans for Turkey in the coming months. So we’re gonna fill you in on that. Stay tuned and watch the end of this video to find out.

And this video will just fill you in a little bit of what we’ve been up to starting with food. We’re a little bit hungry, so let’s go.

02:11 - You can never really go wrong in lokantasi spots. This reminds us of a steam table and a grandma cooking.

02:21 - They’re everywhere in Istanbul. This one is our favorite since this is the first place we ate at fresh from the airport when we arrived here in Istanbul.

02:49 - What I like about this spot it’s called Gurman and they have a whole bunch of different dishes we just we like to pick out a lot of vegetables and they even have meats grilling fresh in the front. So we also got some kofte, grilled Turkish meatballs. But what’s nice is that if you like to eat a little lighter you want to eat some of these vegetables or some non-meat. You know Turkey’s got a lot of meat, a lot of bread. I love it, but you got to switch it up sometimes.

You can get a lot of the more - the lighter dishes here so vegetarians this is the spot for you too. You can get some lentils, chickpeas, beans here and you have this looks like egg with some minced meat and tomato. This food is just very comforting stuff. Like Jumi said, it’s like eating a grandmother’s cooking. I love it. This is all made one way and you just pick it out. It’s very affordable. You can get a whole spread like this for about 60 liras, which is a great value.

Some of the vegetable plates are a little cheaper. And then you have this beautiful kofte fresh off the grill.

04:02 - I just love that smokey flavor, very juicy. There’s a nice red sauce with it too.

04:08 - Nice herbal flavor in that red sauce. This is just a delicious meal. You can’t go wrong in lokantasi. Maybe our favorite place to eat in Istanbul overall. We can eat this every single day. They rotate the dishes as well.

04:29 - And in this part of the episode which is made possible by you where you buy us a coffee. Well in this case it’s not really a coffee, it’s a juice shop. Thanks to you down here below for making this even more possible. Now help us support more local shops like this one by buying us a coffee and more. Thank you.

05:01 - We just love how we sit here in like mid-afternoon it’s most. Sometimes after we eat. Drink our chai and our orange juice and just people watching. One of the biggest pastimes here in turkey is drinking cay, the Turkish tea. You see everybody’s doing it throughout the city multiple times a day. I’m not even the biggest tea drinker myself, but I’m starting to become one just for this very reason. I love how they serve it in this really cool glass.

It’s actually really hot on your fingers, but so nice and strong. And you can add sugar if you like. There’s sugar cubes on the side, but I like it just like this. Straight up tea. So nice and strong. It’s perfect after a big meal like we just had to kind of help digest. And what we also love about this spot is the freshly made juice with this freshly squeezed orange juice. Incredibly refreshing. Get that nice jolt of Vitamin C that you need, especially during these times.

We just love this place. You got these low wooden tables low wooden stools and you can just people watch on the block right here. Tons of locals here, underneath the tree. Very shady.

06:15 - Made a quick stop. If you’re wondering why we made a quick stop at this pet store right here, you’ll see why later. I really love the street out here in Kadıköy.

06:31 - And you’ll find plenty of these while walking around Kadıköy.

06:59 - We have balik ekmek. Balik is fish and ekmek is bread. You see these shops all over Istanbul, especially by the waterfront on the European side. But this spot is just a little low-key shop in the corner here in Kadıköy right by the market. And what makes this one special is they make their own bread. This is not just the usual crusty kind of dry bread you might see. This one is very freshly made. I love this kind of bread okay so the fish they use here is mackerel.

They put it on the flat top, it gets nice a little bit oily and they put it what’s very simple is with some lettuce onion cabbage. Let’s take a bite. What I like about it is the simplicity of the sandwich. You can really taste the fish get that nice oily kind of mackerel flavor in here and the bread itself is very light. It’s not really too fluffy, it’s got a little bit of chew to it too. It’s a really nice type of bread. It’s an excellent sandwich for 10 lira.

We come here almost every single day for this. This right here is the called the Bomba. And what’s in the Bomba that gives it makes it green is parsley, there’s lemon, there’s green apple and there’s ginger.

08:44 - Got it all it’s tangy, spicy from that ginger. I never have tasted parsley in a juice before, but I have to say it’s incredible. I never would expect it to be this good and it is.

09:33 - Wow Yes and uh just like that we are now having carrot juice courtesy of these awesome guys here at the juice bar. Really cool guys his name is John But it’s Şifahane. We’re gonna put a little photo of it and we’re gonna put it in the description where it is too. It’s right by the main entrance to the market here in Kadıköy. You have to come for the juices, they are delicious. Making them fresh. And fun guys. We literally see the process but um i don’t even like carrot juice but this one it’s good it’s real carrot literally i get my vitamins all day long today this is great they’re so nice up next we got my favorite turkish dishes anywhere it is this is beautiful freshly made look how thin that is it’s topped off with minced lamb spices parsley all that good stuff and it’s thrown into a wood-fired oven these guys are pros here they’re doing their thing look how perfectly baked that is super thin crack it hear that snap take a bite first before we add in anything to it that is just perfection it’s nice and crunchy very light you really eat about three of these without any problem what we gotta do is squeeze some lemon add some parsley just like that partially just gives it such a nice refreshing kick that lemon cuts through the richness of the meat a little bit gives a tangy flavor this is really one of the best lamborghini i’ve ever had in my life i love it and you gotta come here in halo in kadukui market really popular institution here this video is not complete without this next stop so we’re here at an og turkish coffee shop called basil bates dates back to 1923 they actually roast and brew their own coffee and what makes turkish coffee special is that it’s unfiltered they use a chesave to basically brew the coffee it goes up to the top and they pour into the cup and it leaves this beautiful foam on top and what’s cool about this shop too is that they don’t have just regular church coffee as well they actually have different varieties we got it with cardamom cardamom is one of my favorite spices in the world it just is magical coffee what you want to do is let this just settle a little bit to the all the coffee grinds go to the bottom wow this is just strong this is a strong cardamom coffee turkish coffee’s so brick not as heavy on the caffeine but it blends in with that cardamom this is freshly muddled cardamom there’s actual cardamom pieces in the bottom of this it is a perfect combination you get it with no sugar you can really taste the flavor of that coffee they serve it to you with water and turkish delight i tell you don’t drink that last part it gets so muddy and um cardamom real cardamom definitely this next spot that we’re about to eat at is one of our favorite places to eat at here at karikoy it’s so cool when you come in going inside the restaurant right at the front you can see the women making the dough for the goslime yes gosumi the first time i had it i had it spinach i had it customized and we loved it so much that we keep coming back ever since and yeah so we’ll show you what we have now evie is really in more of the hip side here in karakoy and the gozlime is the flatbread and it could be filled with anything you want you can actually customize the gosumate however you like it’s very thin dough we actually got it very simple just with spinach inside because we got it a really special way we didn’t even know existed before it came to the shop it’s actually covered in this incredible looking garlic yogurt sauce with tomato and it looks like there’s dried mint on top usually you see that on top of manta but on top of gozo may is really something special i like that simple spinach inside earthy clean because you get that nice tangy yogurt on the outside a little garlicky kick and the refreshing flavor from that dry mitt is beautiful this is really grandma cooking literally because there’s two it’s like grandmothers here making it like making the dough fresh just cooking non-stop on this flat top right when you walk in the door it’s a really special place remember i mentioned before i was getting hooked on chai here’s more never so we have our media doma and some alcoholic beverages this dude we’re gonna go somewhere and enjoy these two but quick note on this place this is one of our favorite well actually our favorite mdoma we love it so much that one time it was raining and we just keep eating because we didn’t mind the rain because this is that good and it is called moda mediasti moda media but it is right at the um busiest part of harikun right let’s enjoy this alcoholic beverage and medidoma by the water all right perfect timing the sun is just above so and our dinner you have fallen in love with katakuri and the asian side of istanbul it’s so laid back very local everyone even chilling here at the park people playing music you have families young people every all ages here lots of cute cats and we’re feeding the cats so we actually bought cat food to feed them this is the media midiadoma media is muscle turkish and doma is stuffed with the rice these are mussels crack one open for you so you see they take the mussel and they stuff it with this mix of rice and put it back into the shell these are excellent we got a spicy version of these so it’s got that rice some bay leaf in there some good spicy chili cooking there the mussels are very fresh too i like that you can still still a good amount of muscle in here even though there’s rice as well this is really it’s a classic istanbul street food you find it all over the streets we like this one shop here in katakuri moda check them out bring it to the water like we did it’s the way to go pair it with some wine this part of the episode is where we’re going to tell you our turkey travel plans so roughly we are going to do a tour around turkey the original plan fell through and we’re here in turkey and we are actually so happy to be here fortunately happy to be here yeah it was a great turn of events that brought us here we’re grateful that we are here and really excited i’ve been here once for a few days 10 years ago and it is my first time i’m gonna try to do we have some rough ideas i’m gonna give it all away but we really want to see a lot of the country you know obviously we can’t see all of the turkey is huge but we want to do kind of some sort of a loop we definitely want to hit up the southern coast in the next few months like antalya right here where this wine is from the aegean coast mediterranean coast somewhere in the east perhaps oh you just stay tuned we’re gonna have some really cool adventures please give us any suggestions of where you think we should go in turkey especially during this time of year summer between august and october that’s our hopefully our plan fingers crossed hopefully everything goes well uh we’re food lovers we have some food destinations in mind but please let us know if any others and as you can see in this video already how much we love food just travel with us around turkey as much as possible travel and eat travel and eat you.