Get to know the complex food culture of Istanbul on this guided street food walking tour. Stop at traditional meyhanes and food markets and sample a wide range of cuisine, including snacks, desserts, and drinks. You and your friends and family will embark on a four-hour gastronomy tour around the world famous Beyoğlu (Pera) neighborhood. Once our experienced guide concludes Istanbul Culinary Tour, you will leave with a stomach full of traditional food, plus local knowledge and sightseeing tips, to enhance the pleasure of your trip that will last with you a lifetime.
Learn about Turkish food culture from a culinary guide
Explore the historical Pera neighborhood
Sample traditional snacks, desserts, and drinks
Visit local meyhanes and food markets
Itinerary
Stop At: Istıklal Street (Beyoğlu)
Beyoğlu was the primary neighborhood of the foreign community as well as non-Muslim Ottoman subjects, Beyoğlu gradually attained a European look with the arrival of foreign embassies as well as Christian from Galata, eventually forming a new community in 17th-century Istanbul. It is now the city’s major entertainment district, full of bars, clubs, cafes, restaurants, and scores of top shopping brands.
We start our food journey with delicious Börek; is a family of baked filled pastries made of a thin flaky dough known as phyllo, of Anatolian origins and also found in the cuisines of the Balkans, Levant, Mediterranean, and other countries in Eastern Europe and Western Asia.
A meyhane is a traditional restaurant or bar in Turkey. It serves alcoholic beverages like wine, rakı, vodka, beer with meze and traditional foods. “Meyhane” is composed of two Persian words: mey (wine) and khāneh (house). A meyhane refers to a restaurant with traditional food, decoration, and music.
After fill our stomach, this time try some stuffed mussels (Midye dolması) is the other iconic seafood-centered street food in Istanbul, and you’ll see people standing around the cart while the vendor squeezes lemon on each dolma before handing them out. People can usually eat a lot of these in one go, so you’ll have to let the vendor know when you’ve had enough. Midye dolması can be found all around the city and is usually a very popular late-night snack.
Stop at another street food vendor for İçli Köfte; Sabirtaşı makes Istanbul’s best içli köfte (a crispy bulgur shell filled with minced meat, parsley, and sautéed pine nuts), and if you don’t feel like walking up to their restaurant, their İstiklal Street vendor is always around to serve up the köfte on the go. Made by hand on a daily basis, the içli köfte are downright delicious.
We are sure, easily you will find Turkish coffee all around Istanbul but you should know another traditional type of coffee drink as Menengic Pistachio Coffee. Menengic is produced from the Menegiç tree. This tree’s Latin name is pistacia terebinthustur. In Turkey, menengic trees grow naturally in mountainous rural parts of the Mediterranean, Southeastern, and Central Turkey without any need of any planting process. Menengiç Coffee has different ways of cooking, but the most common method of cooking is to cook just like Turkish coffee.
You must not leave Turkey without tasting Dürüm Kebab that is the sliced meat of a döner kebab may be served on a plate with various accompaniments, stuffed into a pita or other type of bread as a sandwich, or wrapped in a thin flatbread such as lavash or yufka, known as a dürüm.
Turkish people love sweets and confectioneries. Let try some of them; Beyoğlu Chocolate; one of the most famous chocolates in Istanbul are the milk or dark chocolate bars filled with enormous hazelnuts, pistachios, or almonds, sold on İstiklal Street at Meşhur Beyoğlu Çikolatacısı.
Baklava (baqlawah) is a rich, sweet pastry made of layers of filo pastry filled with chopped walnuts or pistachio and sweetened with syrup or honey. It is a very traditional Turkish Dessert.
We can finish our delicious journey with Turkish Tea, is popular throughout Turkey and the Turkish diaspora.
Transport by funicular
Food tasting – Samples & Snacks
Alcoholic Beverages
Small-group tour
Hotel pickup and drop-off
Gratuities
Departure Point
We’ll meet by the entrance of Tünel (historic funicular) which is opposite to Nord Stern Hotel in Karaköy, located on the street where the tram lines (T1) run through Galata Bridge, approximately one minute walk from Karaköy tram stop.
See on: Apple Maps / Google Maps
Return Details
Our tour concludes at Taksim Square, leaving you free to continue your Istanbul exploration.
What a fantastic experience. erol showed us places and food we would never have tried as we would
not have known about it. A tour every tourist should do
We had an excellent evening with our guide, Erol. We visited a number of restaurants, bars and shops in Beyoglu, and the tour included a lot of historical information. The food we tasted was excellent, and ranged from mezze platters to confectionery. The tour felt very well thought out, our guide was a local expert, and we felt we gained a great insight into the food culture of Istanbul.
My tour guide was excellent, attentive and had a lot of knowledge on Turkish food and history. Me and my partner happened to be the only 2 on this tour and our tour guide still spent a full 4 hours (and bit more). I tasted food I would have never tried and enjoyed immensely. Would recommend this tour to anyone!
Vi havde en dejlig aften med god mad og stemninger. Guiden var god til at fortælle om historie, kultur
og traditioner fra Tyrkiet. Vi nød en masse skønne retter og de 4 timer fløj afsted. Kan helt klart
anbefales – vi gør det gerne igen 😊
This was an excellent tour from the beginning to the end. Meeting up with our guide, Erol, was straightforward and as my 21 year old son and I were his only guests, we had his undivided attention throughout. The tour itself was a gentle stroll through some of the backstreets off Independence Avenue stopping off at Cafes, Taverns and street food stalls to sample a cross-section of delicious foods to include breads, Meze, meats, stuffed mussels and desserts. It was a fascinating insight made better by the detailed and informative comment provided by Erol. I cannot praise Erol highly enough; he was a first class guide providing thoughtful information on the history, cultural significance and relevance not only of the food but of the locations where it was served. This was a wonderful introduction to Turkish food and I highly recommend the tour – bring an appetite, you will need it!
