Ultimate Turkish Food Tour in Istanbul!

Hello everybody! I hope you're all doing well today. This is Doug, and I'm coming to you today from Istanbul, Turkey, where I live. If you haven't seen my video kind of explaining why I live here and that whole situation, you can check it out at the top of the screen. But today is going to be a video all about food. Turkish food. It's amazing. It's world famous. And to help me, with one or two of the first dishes that we're going to try today, I have a very special guest, all the way from Iraq. Hello! Hi! It's Hussein Rashid. Yes, it's me. Partner in crime. Business partner. We lead our tours together in Iraq. If you guys want to join us for one of our upcoming trips in Iraq in the fall, you can check the link down in the description below. They're amazing. Yeah. The best tourists. Great. Amazing tourists. Amazing. Alright, we're going to find some breakfast. It's crowded. Saturday morning. Hello. Hello. Welcome. Alright, guys. So, we're here at a place called Meşhur Menemenci. This means, like, famous menemen maker. It's my favorite menemen place here in Kadıköy. Excuse me, can I order? Of course. One mixed menemen. One mixed menemen. One corned lemon. One corned lemon. Two large teas, please. Two large teas. His Turkish is getting really better. The menemen has arrived. Usually I order the cheese one, but I wanted to try something different, so I got the corn one. The corn one, and I got the cheese one. This is actually the mixed one, so it has meat and cheese in it. Teşekkürler. And, of course, Turkish tea. So, menemen is basically eggs, tomatoes, some peppers, usually. And there's a huge debate in Turkey whether onions are supposed to be included or not. But all of those things kind of cooked on a skillet. It kind of combines a little bit. And then, you eat it with some crusty French bread. Please give us a demonstration. Alright, I'm going to try it again. Rip off some bread. Scoop up some menemen. And, like a pro. So, right when you get it, if you have some cheese on yours, like I do, you're going to want to mix it up to get all that cheese nice and melty inside the dish. It's very cheesy. Crusty bread. Here we go. As always. This is so good. My absolute favorite breakfast food here in Turkey. Cheers. I love Turkey. Alright, guys. The crew here let me in the kitchen. Çok teşekkür ederim. İyi günler. Bye bye. Teşekkürler. Amazing. Best menemen in Kadıköy. Alright, guys. That was delicious. That's one down, but stay tuned because I've got many more of my favorite Turkish foods to share with you guys in this video. Don't go anywhere. Now, before we head to the next stop, I want to tell you guys about the sponsor of today's video, BetterHelp. I've struggled with anxiety at various points throughout my life, but especially in my first couple years at college. And I found going to therapy to be a huge help. I feel like there can sometimes be this misconception that therapy is only for people going through really hard times, but I think therapy should be seen as a normal part of taking care of yourself just day to day. And so that's why I'm really happy to tell you about BetterHelp. BetterHelp connects you online with a licensed therapist who is trained to listen and give you unbiased advice. And getting started is super easy. You just go to their site, answer a few questions about yourself, and then BetterHelp will match you to a professional therapist who has years of experience helping people just like you. And I think for me, the coolest part about BetterHelp is that you can do all of this right from your phone or your computer. And you can talk to your therapist via video chat, phone call, or by messaging, whatever you're most comfortable with. I mean, it is literally the easiest way to start talking to a therapist. So if you're struggling with something, or even if you're just looking for someone who will listen, then I highly recommend you check out BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Doug Barnard and get a special discount on your first month. Alrighty, hello again guys. It is time to continue our eating adventure with Hussein. What we're going to do this time is head to a lokanta. So this is not really about like a specific food item per se, but more the idea of the Turkish lokanta. A lokanta is like a Turkish cafeteria and it's super affordable with so many different foods available. It's kind of like a Turkish stable. It's pretty fast also. So you go there, you pick stuff, and you have it. Very efficient. And here we are now. So let's do it. Okay, so you come in here, grab a tray, and then you can have anything you want here. Chickpeas. What do you call it? Hummus. That is actually hummus. Okay, fair enough. So many different options. We've got Brussels sprouts, broccoli, and then here you've got the sweets. Hayran, I will have one of those. Another Turkish staple. And then you can take some bread if you want, and the meat will come in a little... You take your silverware here. And you can add a little spice here. This is like the closest thing you can get to home-cooked Turkish food. Not from like an actual Turkish mom. So I got water, ayran, eggplant yogurt thing, bread, grilled kofte, izgara kofte, which is like Turkish meatballs, and rice with chickpeas on it. This all in total came to 2.75 lira, which is like a little over $8. Used to be probably you could get all of this for like $5, maybe a year ago, but inflation is a thing. Still a pretty good price for the amount of food you get, I think. First things first, and this is very important. You guys need to know this. When you get ayran in a cup like this, it's very important to shake the ayran for a while, because sometimes the yogurt settles, and I didn't do that one time on TikTok when I first came to Turkey, and I got hundreds, maybe thousands of comments saying, hey, you gotta shake the ayran, so you gotta shake it for a few seconds, and then you're good to go. This ayran is a little bit strange for some people when they come to Turkey for the first time if they're not used to it, because it's a yogurt drink, but it's not sweet, it's savory. It's kind of salty actually, and it's a little bit of an acquired taste, but if you go into it with an open mind, I think you're gonna like it. It's amazing. Mmm, delicious. And then my favorite, grilled meatballs. You get a little spicy pepper right off the grill. Teşekkür ederiz. Bye bye. Alright, how are you feeling? Filled. Filled, yeah, so full. But we're missing the tea now. Oh yeah, we need tea. There is a Fenerbahçe match later, so you can see all the fans here, and it sounds like there's a band coming. I'd like to officially announce that Fenerbahçe is my Turkish team. I'm a Fenerbahçe fan. I live very close to the stadium, just over there, which is why there's so many fans here. Go Fenerbahçe! Here they come. It's gonna be a very loud night. Yeah, it is. I can hear the games from my apartment. Alright, so we're all rooting for Fenerbahçe. Hopefully they win. They're playing Beşiktaş. Çay time. Buyurun. So this is like a little Turkish tea shop. Pretty typical one. Well, that's the only two words that I know. What? İki çay lütfen. Ah, very good. İki çay. Evet. Boom. There we have it. Like ten of these. Yeah, you're Iraqi so you have to. Yeah, I'm really trying to cut the sugar. One is enough. One. Okay, so the thing is here it's not like boiling hot. It's like hot. Just normal hot, which is like very good. Sometimes in Iraq when it's like boiling hot, you just go like this. It will be like immediately colder. Yeah, it gets a little more like air surface on there and cools it off really quick or something. Yeah, but here they take care of the temperature so it's like warm enough to be hold like this and to be drink like immediately. I can't do that immediately here though. That's because you're Iraqi. I'm still a noob. Like it's too hot for me to grab right now. I have to give it some time. Now, fun fact for you guys. Turkey actually consumes the most tea per capita of any country in the world. More than the British. More than the Chinese. Turkey is number one for tea consumption. Mission accomplished. We got our çay. You have to have it after like a rich meal. That's true actually, yeah. Guys, it's time to say goodbye to Hüseyin unfortunately. Yeah, I'm going back to Iraq at midnight. You'll probably see him again. Well, you'll definitely see him again in upcoming videos or if you come on one of our tours, one of our group trips to Iraq. Iraq is waiting. We're waiting for you. Alright. Alright, Habibi. Thanks for your help. Bye! Stay tuned guys. More to come. Both men are watching. Alright, hello guys. It's the next day now and it's a rainy day here in Istanbul but I have to head out to show you guys my next favorite food here in Turkey or Türkiye new name. So, we're heading out in Kadıköy and we're going to get midye dolma. Merhaba. Sade mi? Sade. Tamam. Limonum daha gelmedi ama. Limon yok mu? Yok, daha gelmedi. Okay, problem yok. İstediğinizi alabilirsiniz. Tamam. Bunlar nereden geliyor? Çiftlik mi diyorsun? Pardon? Denizden. Denizden. Hangi deniz? Deniz. Okay. Abi, limon var. Teşekkür ederim. Alright guys, here we are. I'm sitting inside the little shop here. This place is called Mora Midyecisi. Midye means muscles. They're actually called midye dolma, like stuffed muscles because if you open one of these up, you'll see on the inside is a muscle but it's been stuffed with rice and they're pretty amazing. Alright, so here is how you do this. You're going to take one, reopen it like that. Then you can take off the empty side and now you can use this empty one as a spoon to scoop it out from the other side. Usually it sticks to one side. You pull it out just like that. It's stuffed with rice and then, very importantly you gotta take a little lemon and squeeze a lot of fresh lemon on there. And then this is a big street food. It's also a big drunk food or like nightlife food, snack, whatever. And the cool thing about midye is that you just show up and you basically eat as many as you want and then pay at the end. He'll count how many empty shells there are. That's how it goes. 10 lira per muscle which is like 30 cents or something. Good stuff. Midye is amazing. I highly, highly recommend them. Don't be intimidated. Just go for it. Alright guys we're all done there. I only ate 5 so it was 50 lira which is like a dollar 60 cents-ish. So very affordable and I gotta save room because we've got a few more delicious Turkish foods coming right up later today. So, stay tuned. I'll see you in a few. It's so funny. Çok teşekkür ederim. Teşekkürler. Thank you. Çok güzel. Alrighty guys and it is time for the next stop on our amazing food tour and this time we have another very special guest with us. The lovely Ilkay. Say hello. Hello. So Ilkay brought me to... Where did you bring me? Where are we? We are in Göktürk right now. There is a very special and famous mantı place. We call it Aşkana. Aşkana. And what is mantı? Mantı is like Turkish ravioli. Turkish ravioli. So good. Yeah, it's so good and today we ordered boiled and we ordered mixed. One of them is boiled and the other one is fried one. And what's on top of it? Of course, yogurt with garlic. Actually, I've never had the fried one. Really? I hope you're gonna like it. I think I will. It looks great. Here we go. Okay, I'm gonna get a little bit of both. We got the fried one and the boiled one in one bite here. It's really good. Delicioso. Çok. Muy delicioso. I'm working hard on learning Turkish and whenever I try to speak Spanish, which I learned for years now, I can only think of Turkish words. Oh, this is really good. I really love the fried ones. Really? Yeah. Me too. I wish I'd never tried it. Because you're American. Yeah, exactly. Fried ones. Now I'm only gonna eat those. Alright, we're gonna eat up. See you in a few. And there's one more thing we're gonna try, so stay tuned. Okay, that was delicious and now we have something else here. What have we got here, Ilkay? Sarma. Normally we're not eating with meat one, but today we're gonna eat with meat. Okay, so this is, what is this, like, it's grape leaves, right? Grape leaves, meat inside, and also rice. Okay, so they make it without meat? Yeah. Usually, but this one has meat. And you're not happy about it. In my city. In your city, without meat. Yeah. Where are you from? Izmir. Izmir. By the way, guys, Ilkay here is a chef, so this is, like, a lot of pressure. Have to make sure we're having good food, because high standards, you know. Alright. Afiyet olsun. So, we're using our hands. Of course, we are Turkish. Always with yogurt. You're gonna dig in. A big What do you think? It's good. Good? But I prefer without meat. But it's good. I like them, but, you know, I have my American palate, and I'm not a chef. Cheers. Cheers. You told me there's one more thing here that we're gonna try. The dessert. Dessert. That's coming up. Oh, çok güzel. So, here we go, guys. We've got the dessert, which is just called yogurt sweet. Is that right? Yoğurt tatlısı. And what's in it? Yogurt. Oh, no way. clotted cream on top. Clotted cream, wow. It's like kaymak, you said? I think you're gonna love it. It's very good together. You first. Ladies first. Me first? What is that? Oh, my God. It's a big one. Yeah, you got this. We call it nazar. When you say, like, you got this, and if I drop it, so we call it nazar. Your eyes did it to you, like, I drop it. Lezzetli mi? Voila. Okay, I want to try. I will help you. And I've never tried this before. Thank you. Is it good? Yeah, the cream? On top, it's amazing. Yeah, and it's, like, really cold. It's so good. What's it like? It's kind of wet. The cake is kind of wet. Is it soaked in, like, some sugar or something? Very good. We're gonna eat this up, but stay tuned because there is one more very famous Turkish dessert that we have to show you guys. That's coming right up. Alrighty, and you guys know how it goes here in Turkey. Gotta have çay. Herzlman. Always. Always. You have to drink the tea like this. We're very fancy. So good. Not like that. No? Just, like, cool. Not like a weirdo. Yeah, not like a weirdo. Alright, guys, and it's the last stop of the video. What a delicious couple of days it's been. What do we got here, chef? Turkish baklava. So we've got two pieces. One made with pistachio and one made with walnut. Ceviz. And the other one is? Fistik. Thank you. And what's your favorite one? Of course, pistachio is better than walnut, sorry. Well, I'm not sorry. Well, I like the walnut one, actually, I think, a little better. So, apparently, we're supposed to eat these in one bite. Yeah. And you're gonna have pistachio and I'm gonna have ceviz. But you have to turn it up. Turn it upside down? Upside down. Really? Yeah. Why? So you're gonna feel the in your, what is it, stomach? On the roof of your mouth. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Wait for it. But it's not gonna look so good. No, it will look so good. Alright, go for it. Wait. What we got? Wow! Amazing. Is it good? Okay. We'll give you a break. Enjoy. Okay, and here is mine. This is the walnut one. And I must turn it over. I'm just learning this for the first time today. I've eaten a lot of baklava and I've never done it the right way, I guess. Here we go. One bite. Is it bad? The restaurant is talking with me when I'm eating so I'm trying the same with me. The turning it over is good. I know. This is why you gotta hang out with a chef. Chef Ilkay. Thank you so much. You're welcome, gentlemen. Do you like this? I am so full. How are you feeling? I have a food baby. Chef, thank you so much for joining us. You know what? Let's go to my home to drink some Turkish coffee. Okay. What do you think? Alright, good idea. Alrighty, guys. That is going to bring us to the end of this ultimate Turkish food tour. I think we covered some good things. Hopefully you guys like the dishes that I chose to include in this video, but if you didn't, I'm sure you will let me know in the comments. Hopefully I'll have some more YouTube videos coming up from Turkey very soon, so stay tuned for those. Other than that, thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one. Bye bye.