Get to know the complex food culture of Istanbul on this guided street food walking tour. Explore the Pera neighborhood and visit some of the hidden passages and streets including the Flower Passage, Hazzopulo, and Asmali Mescit. Stop at traditional meyhanes and food markets and sample a wide range of cuisine, including snacks, desserts, and drinks.
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
This tour takes you into the heart of the modern sectıon of Istanbul, ‘quirky’ meyhanes and bustling food markets. You and your friends and family will embark on a four-hour gastronomy tour around the world famous Beyoğlu (Pera) neighborhood.
All food, snacks, desserts and drinks (such as rakı and pistachio coffee), and a professional tour passing its most famous hidden passages (Flower Passage, Hazzo Poulo, Asmalı Mescit,) are included in the price. 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.
Istanbul is famous across Turkey for its outstanding street food but discovering good eateries in a big city is not always easy. Not to worry, that’s where we come in! We’ll help you experience all the flavors the city has to offer by guiding you through Istanbul’s best street food area called Beyoglu or a.k.a. Pera.
When you’re in Istanbul, you’ll soon realize that there are a lot of street vendors in every neighborhood selling all kinds of delicacies. From the iconic Istanbul simit to a fish sandwich by the Bosphorus, the city has lots of food that you can eat on the go or very late in the evening when everything else is closed.
Continue with Meyhane (Mezes and raki experience)
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.
Menengic Pistachio Coffee
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 coffee tree. This tree is Latin name is pistacia terebinthustur. In Turkey, menengic trees grow naturally in mountainous rural parts of the Mediterranean region, Southeastern Anatolia region, and Central Anatolia region 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. Since the early 1970s, the sandwich or wrap form has become popular around the world as a fast food dish sold by kebab shops and is often called simply a “kebab”. The sandwich generally contains salad or vegetables, which may include tomato, lettuce, cabbage, onion with sumac, fresh or pickled cucumber, or chili, and various types of sauces.
Turkish people love sweets and confectionaries. 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. The manufacturer of these grab-and-go chocolates is Elit, which has been around since 1924.
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.Ice cream; traditional ice cream in Turkey incorporates natural thickening agents, which give it a smooth, compact, and almost stringy texture.
We can finish our delicious journey with Turkish Tea, is popular throughout Turkey and the Turkish diaspora. Turkish tea culture also extends to Northern Cyprus and some countries in the Balkan Peninsula..
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Food & Beverages mentioned in itinerary
Small-group tour
English Speaking Guide
Hotel pickup and drop-off
Gratuities
See on: Apple Maps / Google Maps
Your tour concludes at the Tunel end of the Istiklal Street, leaving you free to continue your Istanbul sightseeing.
Let me start by saying that Erol, our guide was AMAZING. He spent 4.5 hours with us showing us EVERYTHING that Istanbul has to offer in terms of food. We walked and ate and ate and walked and learned so much along the way. He is very personable and showed us everything we needed to know about the local food in Turkey, as well as the hidden gems that we wouldn’t have even known existed in this amazing city. What a fantastic food tour. HIGHLY recommend.
Had the most amazing food experience in Istanbul. A ‘must do’ tour while you are here. So much
different food and drinks to try off the tourist track. Guarantee you will enjoy!
Errol (guide) was waiting at the meeting point when I got there, and he found me immediately. We were joined by just one couple, so wandering around the streets was easy with just four people, especially as the streets were busy all the way from our meeting point at the entrance of the Tunel and along lively Istiklal Caddesi in Beyoglu all the way to Taksim. Errol was generous with his time and his knowledge. He was enthusiastic, and kind. We sampled a variety of local dishes and drinks, including stuffed mussels and a drink that looked like Turkish coffee but was in fact a drink made from pistachio. He took us to eateries we would not have found without a guide, all of which were interesting and different. This tour is a great way to be introduced to some of Turkey’s cuisine and to orientate oneself regarding the physical environment. Worth doing.
Our guide met us promptly at the identified location and immediately made us feel at home. He provided insight into the food and the eating and shopping habits of the Turkish people which really helped us to better understand the culture. He would consistently fill in gaps on the food, the region or the history of both Istanbul and Turkey and the culture influencing the food. It was a great introduction and we felt like we were having dinner with an old family friend.
We always try and take a food tour when visiting a new city and the evening tour of Istanbul did not disappoint. Errol was great (sorry, Erol for being 30 minutes late), really knowledgeable about food, culture, history and everything else. He took us to some great little places and other shops not on the itinerary. Istanbul on a Friday night is packed and we had to wait for a while in some places but we loved every second. Erol was happy to spend longer due to the crowds and we really appreciated it. At the end of the tour, we jumped on the metro with him back to the old city and he made sure we got off at a stop closest to our hotel.
The only mistake we made, was taking the tour after we had an early flight into turkey. We were really tired by the end but we didn’t have a lot of spare time in Istanbul to be choosy about the day we did this.
Take the tour, it’s great and you won’t regret it.
