Browsing by Category: Istanbul

Earlier this week, Eater ran my Istanbul Heatmap, a collection of places that are new (or at least have something new about them). If I could have written only about the places I love, no matter how long they have been established, the piece would have gone a little something like this: (more…)

I am super excited to announce the arrival of “Katie Parla’s Istanbul”, which hit the App Store a few hours ago! For over a decade, I have been studying Istanbul and its food, tracing the origins of the city’s dishes, crisscrossing the Bosphorus in search of ingredients and feeding my full-blown obsession with (more…)

So many of İstanbul’s so-called fine dining establishments fall way short of expectations. In a sense, most of them aren’t meant to have good food, anyway, but instead serve as trendy places with boring food where people go to see (more…)

Superlatives are highly subjective and, in most cases, proclaiming a place “the best” is arbitrary, or even ridiculous. But when it comes to Adana Oçakbaşı in Kurtuluş, I see no other way to proceed. Go see for yourself. Book well in advance and if you can take the heat, sit near the grill where ciğer (liver) is (more…)

Mantı, which are sometimes described as Turkish ravioli, are pinched dumplings filled with meat. They are a specialty of Kayseri, a city in central Anatolia near Cappadocia, and are serve slathered in garlic and yogurt, then drizzled with melted butter. If this sounds like the perfect food, it kind of is— (more…)