Posts about Turkey
Turkish Delights
If you want to find the Berk Family on a Sunday night it’s pretty easy to track us down: look no further than Anatolia Restaurant in Nashville, TN. Only a few blocks from my house, my family’s been having weekly Turkish feasts there ever since the restaurant opened. Addiction is a strong word, but I’d say it’s fitting to describe my relationship with hummus.
Needless to say, I was pretty excited for the food when I arrived in Istanbul. Turkish food is a wonderful fusion of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. Everyone knows and loves kebabs, warm pita and creamy hummus, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
To start off a meal, try the unfathomably delicious spicy tomato dish Ezme. Somewhere between a chopped salad and a dip, this salsa-like treat goes great with Hummus or Haydari, a yogurt sauce with walnuts and crushed mint.
If you want something a little heartier, go for the Filo Dough Rolls (sometimes called “cigarette” pasties because of their thin shape.) Sweet feta cheese is mixed with herbs, rolled inside a phyllo pastry, and deep-fried to perfection. Crisp on the outside with hot melted cheese on the inside, these can be eaten plain or dipped in a sweet rose sauce. When restaurants serve roses in the food instead of on the table you know you’re on to something good.
Next up is Guven, a traditional Turkish stew. A casserole filled with carrots, bell peppers, eggplant, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, onion, and plenty of spices is cooked in a clay oven and served bubbling hot at the table. I don’t understand how relatively plain vegetables can taste so good, but I don’t question: I eat.
If these dishes don’t appeal to you then there are endless more options of stews, casseroles, kebabs, Turkish pizzas, salads, and sweet pastries—not to mention their famous Teas and Hookahs. And there’s no shortage of great restaurants and local spots to try out in Turkey. Ask the waiter to surprise you and you won’t be disappointed.
Alright, alright I’ll get to the question everyone really wants to know: do they eat turkey in Turkey? I can’t say I had any, but there’s only so much a vegetarian can do in the name of journalism. You’ll have to go and figure that one out for yourself.
Visiting the Turkish Baths
There’s a Turkish man by the tub. And he is ready to thoroughly scrub down any and everyone who comes his way.
Hamams, also known as the Turkish baths, are not your average bath time. I don’t know what I was expecting but definitely nowhere near the full body, full contact exfoliation I received.
With visions of relaxing Thai massages still dancing in our heads, Kathryn and I eagerly make our way to one of the oldest bath houses in Kusadasi. At the doorway, an elderly and shirtless all-male staff greets us. Not exactly the gentle female masseuses I was thinking.
They throw us a towel, we strip down to our swim suits, and enter into what feels like the world’s largest steam room. As we adjust to the overpoweringly thick air, we join other bathers sprawled out on a massive marble heat rock waiting their turn for the baths.
Finally, last in line to go, Ahmet nods at me and loudly spanks the slab with his exfoliating mitt and grunts, “Up!”
Here we go…
So I obediently hop up onto the counter and tense with anticipation. My bath boy sloughs off about 9 layers of skin with that soapy sandpaper mitten of his. And let’s just say, the Turks aren’t afraid to get friendly with the scrubbing strokes. Hello Ahmet. I’m glad we are such intimate friends now.
After a solid 15 minutes of the skin peel, I head to round 2 of bath time: the “massage.”
Another giant, towel-only-clad Turk beckons me to the marble. He douses me with a thick layer of bubbles and digs his thumbs into every muscular tissue I have. He then proceeds to bend and twist my limbs into quite the pretzel… a shape you should really only see at circuses.
At the end of the massage, he let’s out a loud chuckle and gets on the tiny slab with me. Yes. Me in my bikini pressed against my round, shirtless human pretzel maker. He smiles for the camera, gives me a squeeze, and dumps a cold bucket of water over us to clean off the soap.
Now, while this may not sound like a restful day at the spa, I will say that afterward I felt surprisingly relaxed and refreshed!
So if you ever stop by Turkey and you’re into extreme adventure sport bathing, I highly suggest you give the hamams a whirl. Be sure to tell Ahmet I said hello.