Heading abroad to new and exciting destinations is all part of the thrill of going on holiday. But sometimes it can be hard to break away from old habits and try something different in the form of the local food. Turkish cuisine offers a great variety of exciting dishes; bursting with flavour and enticing you to indulge in its tasty goodness. Why not try living like a local and include some of these popular dishes into your Turkey holiday?
Breakfast
• Village breakfast – The locals love dining out for breakfast; feasting on fresh bread, eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, jams, honey and much more that’ll set you up for the day. • Menemen – A popular and traditional breakfast dish consisting of scrambled egg and vegetables.
Lunch
• Döner kebabs – The Turkish classic and the perfect option for a great street food lunch whilst on the go in Turkey. • Tost – Another type of street food, tost is like a giant toastie and comes with a variety of fillings such as cheese, tomato or meat. It’s also nice and cheap too. • Pide – Really cheap and incredibly filling, pide is a great lunch choice. It’s super tasty too and is best described as Turkey’s answer to pizza. • Gözleme – A cross between a pancake and a flatbread but with a lot more skill involved, gözleme is a delicious meal with savoury fillings such as meat and potatoes or cheese and spinach.
Dinner
• Meze – Almost like tapas, meze is a selection of small dishes served either as an accompaniment with alcohol or as appetisers before your main meal. • Grilled meats and fish – Main meals often include fresh and locally sourced meat and fish, which means it’ll be great quality and absolutely delicious. • Köfte and şiş kebabs – Okay, so you may have had döner kebab at lunch time, but köfte (Turkish meatballs) and şiş (shish) kebabs make for a very substantial main meal too, especially when served with rice or bulgur wheat and salad. • Baklava – Famous for causing a pronunciation nightmare on The Great British Bake Off, baklava is an incredibly popular desert in Turkey. Think sweet pastry, chopped nuts and lots of sticky, syrupy goodness.
End of the night
Stop right there! If you’ve indulged in one or two holiday drinks, don’t you dare be reaching for another kebab… That may well be the food of choice at the end of the night back home. But in Turkey, believe it not, the dish of choice is in fact soup.
