Name: Istanbul Culinary Tour: Local Tavern and Gourmet Street Foods
Price: 60 €
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749

4 Hours

Availability : Monday to Sunday

Entrance of Tunnel at Karaköy

Taksim Square

Min Age : 16+

Max People : 6

Overview

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

Why Travelers Choose This Tour

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.

What to Expect

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.

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.

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. 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. 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..

Important Information

Inclusions

Funicular From Karaköy Tunnel to Istiklal Avenue
Food & Beverages mentioned in itinerary
English Speaking Guide
Beverages & Food Tastings
All taxes, fees and handling charges
Professional guide
Small-group tour

Exclusions

Food & Beverages not mentioned above
Tips & Gratuities ( optional )
Pick-up or Drop-off

Departure and Return Location

We’ll meet by the entrance of Tünel (funicular) at 6.00 pm, opposite of Nordstern Hotel in Karaköy , Your guide will be waiting for you with Tematique Tour sign.

Address: Arap Cami Mahallesi Tersane Cad. No:9 34421 Beyoğlu/İstanbul Turkey

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.

Additional Information

Confirmation will be received at the time of booking
Comfortable walking shoes are recommended
Dress code is smart casual
Run rain or shine with minimum 1, maximum 6 people

4 Reviews

Sort By:RatingDate

David B, Australia

Family Traveller

Our family of 3 have just completed an evening Street Food walking tour with Erol our guide. It was a wonderful experience, beginning in Galata with a ride up the funicular into Beyoğlu. Erol was waiting when we arrived about ten minutes early which was a good sign. He then took us on a meandering route in and out of small side streets and alleys, along the İstiklal Caddesi, finally ending up at Taksim Square. Over the course of the evening we were treated to various delicious Turkish foods in a number different small restaurants, interspersed with a wide ranging conversation, not just about food but also about life in Turkey, Ottoman history, and the origins of the food we were sampling.
Erol was generous with his time and knowledge, so much so that when he finally left us, he had to hurry to catch the last train to his home. From our point of view, the evening seemed to pass quickly as the tour was absorbing, the food delicious, and the sights extraordinary. We are familiar with Turkish food, as we occasionally go to Turkish restaurants in our home city, however the tour was still very well worth doing as we got to try wonderful things that we would not normally have available at home, and saw small streets away from the main thoroughfares.
I organised this tour via the internet from the other side of the world. The arrangements were exactly as planned, my queries answered promptly, and everything went perfectly.
I would highly recommend this tour if you have an evening in Istanbul and want to immerse yourself in this wonderful city with a knowledgeable guide. You won’t regret it!

September 23, 2018

Felipe P

Couple Traveller

Great experience!

We took the food tour and it was great and informative. We tried all kinds of food and beverages on different places complemented with great stories.

June 2, 2018

Naushine K

Solo Traveller

My tour guide was amazingly informative and very nice. He added in a lot of historical references and made the tour very enjoyable. All the places he took us to were very good. The only very minor change i would recommend is to maybe add in some kebab or meat dishes to the food portion as Turkey is known for that. Other than that, great experience and would definitely recommend!

March 24, 2018

Denise K

Family Traveller

Great food tour. Out of the way spots you’d never find on your own and fabulous food.

March 23, 2018

Istanbul Culinary Tour: Local Tavern and Gourmet Street Foods

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