What to Eat in Istanbul: Dishes, Origins, and How to Order

If you want to eat like a local in Istanbul, order the dishes the city actually built its day around: a fried-mackerel sandwich by the water at Eminönü, a plate of döner shaved from a turning spit, stuffed mussels and grilled offal from the street carts, an unhurried multi-plate breakfast, and a small cup of unfiltered coffee at the end. Each has a specific place it comes from and a specific way to order it, and once you know the origin and the vocabulary, the food stops being generic "Turkish" and starts being a map of the city. This guide walks through what to eat, where the tradition comes from, and how to ask for it.

Istanbul food splits neatly onto both sides of the Golden Horn, which is exactly how our Istanbul walking tours are organized. The waterfront at Eminönü, the covered markets, and the hill of Galata each have their own eating culture. Pair the reading below with a self-guided walk from /turkey/istanbul and you can eat your way through the same ground you cover on foot.

Balık ekmek: the fish sandwich at Eminönü

Start where the city meets the sea. Balık ekmek means "fish bread," and it is a fillet of fried or grilled oily fish, usually mackerel, folded into a bun with raw onion, lettuce, and a hard squeeze of lemon. You eat it standing up near the Galata Bridge and the Eminönü waterfront, often bought straight from a boat rigged with a grill.

The tradition grew out of the fishing trade at the bridge. For generations, fishermen brought their catch from the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara to the Galata Bridge to sell, and over time a few boatmen rigged small grills right on their decks so they could cook the fish and hand it across in bread instead of selling it raw. The grill boats became an Istanbul fixture through the twentieth century, and today they are moored along the Eminönü shore between the bridge and the ferry docks. Most of the mackerel now arrives from farther afield rather than the strait itself, but the sandwich is the same. This is the natural endpoint of the Bazaar Between Two Seas walk, which finishes at the Eminönü waterfront where the fish-bread boats still tie up. How to order: point at the grill, ask for one "balık ekmek," and add "limonlu" if you want extra lemon. Eat it with a paper cone of pickled turnip juice (şalgam) if a vendor offers it.

Döner and İskender: the meat that turns

Döner is the meat carved from a tall stack rotating beside a vertical flame. The word döner literally means "it turns," and that turning is the whole technique: the outer edge crisps and bastes in its own fat, and the cook shaves it off in thin ribbons to order. It is served in bread, on rice, or over a plate.

The plated version has a documented origin. Mehmetoğlu İskender Efendi created the first İskender kebap in Bursa in 1867, standing the meat upright before a charcoal fire instead of roasting a whole lamb flat. İskender kebap is döner laid over pieces of soft bread, topped with tomato sauce, a scoop of yogurt, and sizzling butter poured over the top. From that Bursa innovation, the turning spit spread outward into the shawarma, the gyro, and the al pastor taco. How to order: "döner" for the everyday version, "İskender" for the buttered plate. You will find both throughout the bazaar quarter you cross on the Grand Bazaar and Eminönü walk.

Street carts: kokoreç, midye dolma, and simit

Three things you buy without sitting down:

• Kokoreç is seasoned lamb intestines wrapped around offal, roasted on a spit, then chopped fine, spiced, and packed into bread. It is the classic late-night food after a night out. Order it "yarım" (half) or "çeyrek" (quarter) portion in bread, and say "acılı" if you want it spicy.
• Midye dolma are mussels stuffed with herbed rice, served cold. The vendor pops the shell, you squeeze lemon over it, and you use the empty half-shell as a scoop. Pay per mussel and keep going until you wave the seller off. This is a Galata and waterfront staple, easy to find along the The City Across the Water route.
• Simit is the ring of bread crusted in sesame seeds, sold from red carts everywhere. It is chewy, cheap, and the standard morning bread. Ask a cart for one simit and you have breakfast for pocket change.

Kahvaltı: breakfast is a table, not a plate

Turkish breakfast, kahvaltı, is a spread rather than a single dish, and the word itself means "before coffee." A full table carries white cheese (beyaz peynir), olives, cucumber and tomato, honey with clotted cream (bal kaymak), butter, several jams, simit, and eggs. The egg dish to know is menemen: eggs cooked loose into sautéed tomatoes and green peppers, kept slightly runny so you scoop it up with bread.

Order a "serpme kahvaltı" and the kitchen brings the full array of small plates for the table. It is a long, slow meal, which fits the way our walks are built: no schedule, no group, your own pace. Reading a breakfast before the Sultanahmet walk sets you up for a two-hour route across the old peninsula.

Sweets: baklava, künefe, and where they come from

Baklava is thin sheets of pastry layered with butter and chopped nuts, baked and soaked in syrup. The reference standard comes from Gaziantep in Turkey's southeast, which UNESCO named a Creative City of Gastronomy in 2015, the only Turkish city with the title. "Antep Baklavası" was registered by the European Commission as a Protected Geographical Indication in 2013, the first Turkish product to earn that protection, and it is built on the region's local pistachios. When a shop advertises "Antep fıstıklı" baklava, it is claiming that pistachio pedigree.

Künefe is the other dessert to seek out: fine kadayıf pastry filaments packed with unsalted stretchy cheese, baked until the top is golden and the inside pulls into threads, then drenched in syrup and eaten hot. It comes from the Hatay region in southern Turkey. Order it fresh and eat it immediately, while the cheese still stretches.

How to drink: coffee and tea

Turkish coffee is finely ground beans simmered in a small pot with water and sugar until it foams, then poured unfiltered into a small cup with the grounds settling at the bottom. UNESCO inscribed Turkish coffee culture on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013. You order it by sugar level, not by size:

• Sade: no sugar (bitter)
• Az şekerli: a little sugar
• Orta şekerli: medium, about a teaspoon
• Çok şekerli: sweet, two teaspoons or more

Let the grounds settle before you sip, and do not drink the sludge at the bottom. Tea (çay) is the everyday drink, served hot and black in small pear-shaped glasses, refilled endlessly, and offered as a sign of welcome. Turkish tea culture was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022, shared with Azerbaijan. A glass of tea is how a shopkeeper in the Grand Bazaar opens a conversation, so accept it.

Eat it on the walk

The cleanest way to use this list is to attach it to the ground you are already covering. The Grand Bazaar and Eminönü walk ends at the fish-bread boats. The Galata walk runs past the midye dolma and kokoreç carts of Beyoğlu. The Sultanahmet walk is a natural pairing with a long breakfast beforehand. See all three self-guided routes and the food-facing detail on the Istanbul walking tours hub and the city page at /turkey/istanbul.

Sources

• Balık ekmek, Wikipedia
• History of İskender kebap, İskender İskenderoğlu (official)
• Turkish coffee culture and tradition, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage
• Culture of Çay (tea), UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage
• UNESCO Cities of Gastronomy: Gaziantep