Browsing by Category: Istanbul

With a storefront like this, I shoulda known.

You know how sometimes your iPhone camera doesn’t do a subject justice? In the right light it does a pretty good job. But other times, it just doesn’t come close to capturing the true nature of what you’ve witnessed. That happened to me on Saturday at Datlı Maya, a well liked and inexplicably popular cafe in Istanbul’s Cihangir. My good ol’ (more…)

Kağıthane paper shop in Istanbul sells a lot of, well, paper. But the store stocks a far more precious and interesting product: Santimetre‘s handmade porcelain objects for everyday use. I popped into the Nişantaşı branch of the shop last week. I was looking for note cards, which I did not find (they sell every paper novelty imaginable (more…)

It happens every time I go to Istanbul. I visit for a few days and the city embeds itself so far under my skin that I find it emotionally distressing to leave. This is how it used to feel when I left Rome during my bright college years when I was coming and going for thesis research. But back in the early 2000s, I was ballsy and my brain was (more…)

Just as artichoke season is ending in Rome, things are really getting going in Istanbul. Due to its history of commerce and immigration, it is quite natural to find produce in Istanbul that is imported from other parts of Turkey. In January, the first artichokes arrive from Cyprus. And in April and May, artichokes from Izmir flood the (more…)

As we walked down Via dei Pettinari in Rome on Tuesday, clients asked me, “is there anything you don’t eat.” I paused for a moment and thought long and hard. “I don’t love brains,” was my reply. But I never turn them down, either. There had (more…)