The food in Turkey is delicious. There is really no other word to describe it. I have actually missed it so much that last weekend I went to the Turkish restaurant in the neighborhood, but it was only a faint comparison.

I saw this promotional tourism video before I left, and the image I most remember is at 44 seconds. Turkish ice-cream! The video makes it look like a semi-solid, super elastic form of ice-cream. All I knew was that I had to have some. But of course, only in America do you sell ice-cream in the winter! 😦

6/1/2014 EDIT: It has come to my attention that the video above no longer exists. This must have happened when the Turkish government blocked YouTube. It was basically a really cute tourism video made by Turkish Airlines, but as Turkish Airlines is run by the government I doubt that the video will be back anytime soon 😦

Anyways, my favorite food by far was the Turkish pizza, called Pide.

My second favorite food was Kofte, a spiced, grilled, meat-ball like food.

The Turkish people make rice really, really well. So well, that we would order extra sides of it! It’s called Pilav (like pilaf!)  and it usually has some sort of oil that gives it such a distinctive, light, pleasant flavor.

One night our group was invited to a Turkish family’s home for dinner! It was such an interesting cultural experience. They served dinner buffet-style and had many different dishes. I only took one picture, because I didn’t want to seem like a creeper, but everything was delicious!

Street Food: Doner!

Chicken Shish

Ottoman Food: One night we went to an Ottoman restaurant in the neighborhood. Apparently Ottoman food is different from Turkish food because they tend to serve fruit in their meat dishes!

Manti:

One day, while we were with a CHP (political party in Turkey) candidate, we went to have lunch with the textile workers of Beyoğlu, a district in Istanbul. There were so many different groups of people from all over the world! The textile companies provide meals for their workers and give them lunch breaks, so this place was constantly full of people. They all segregated to sit with people who spoke their own language, but I met a man from Nigeria because he was the only worker there that we knew spoke English. I wish I could have found a way to discover how many different countries the workers were all from!

Okay, I lied earlier. Istanbul does sell ice-cream in the winter, but you really have to search for it. Every time I saw that rare someone with ice-cream in the street, we were always rushing to our next meeting of the day! I was convinced that it was my fate to never have the pleasure of trying Turkish ice-cream, but by pure luck I found it on my last day!

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