Day 5- Turkish Cuisine

I wish I had taken more photos of the delicious food we ate while in Turkey. Most of the time I was too hungry to bother and some of the time (actually just once) I was too busy trying to get Booker out of the restaurant bathroom after he locked himself in. They had to eventually dismantle the door to get him out. Lesson learned, don't let your four year old go to the bathroom by himself.

Most days we ended up eating the hotel breakfast in the morning and then had one more meal sometime in the late afternoon. We ate a lot of street food- lots of doner sandwiches (like sharwarma), lots of kofte, some lahmacun (Turkish pizza) and the boys definitely enjoyed many a kasarli tost (grilled cheese sandwich). Breakfast was the same each morning- yogurt, olives, honey, jam, figs, bread, cheese, cold meats, spiced sausages and this thing that I can't quite describe, maybe someone who's been to Turkey can help me out? It was sweet and spongey, and sort of like meringue but moist and it looked like foie gras. My google search for "Turkish breakfast item that is sweet but looks like liver" didn't turn anything up. Anyways, I liked it.

Basically, I liked it all. Turkish cuisine seems to be the perfect blend of Arabic and Greek food, two of my favorite food categories. I wanted to eat authentic Turkish food the whole time but Booker begged us to go to McDonald's one afternoon, so we did. Those boys polished off their happy meals faster than you can say kofte kebab. Clark enjoyed his McTurko and I just tried to keep from upchucking my chicken nuggets. Yelch.

Another night we picked a restaurant based on an online review that said the food was good and the view of the Blue Mosque was spectacular. We walked there, passing the Hagia Sophia on the way...

Once there, they told us that the balcony with the good view was closed "for winter." Well, five minutes later a bus full of Asian tourists showed up. There must have been at least 100 of them. This was a big restaurant with several floors and guess where they got seated? Yup, the balcony with my view. Oh well. At least the food was delicious. Although when I tried to order the mezze, the server told me that it was unavailable, because you know, "it's winter." Which is weird since mezze is basically just a small sampling of whatever you've got. I swear I saw some of those other tourists with a mezze platter in front of them.

At least the walk there and back was nice...