Istanbul Travel Blog

In earlier article, I must have already mentioned how Etçii is the “father” of all other steakhouses in the city, in the sense that it is founded in the land of where the meat to all other steakhouses come from… This land is called Tuzla. Tuzla is a suburban countryside next to the Marmara...

A few weeks ago was a rainy day in Istanbul. With a gray sky and a soft rain, there were few options on how to spend the day. One could go to a cinema, luck themselves up at the gym, get a nice back massage and do a spa day or stay in, watch DVD. I would have gone for the massage  and the spa; but a...

The week ahead, that is until the 20th of March, Nisantasi will be celebrating the restaurant week. That is participant restaurants and cafes in the district, will be offering special meals at special prices throughout the week. There will be two price categories: 20 TRY and 45 TRY. Each category consists...

Yasemin Elçi is a hard “lifeworker”, in the sense that she realizes very early in life, how important it is to do what you like, despite all the popular views. She graduated from Robert College (RC), which is a highly competitive high school in Istanbul, in 2003. As many of RC’s highly...

Kuzguncuk is a tiny town in the district of Üsküdar on the Asian Bosphorus. It is a cute and nostalgic town, where the residents know one and the other too well. It is one of those little towns that has changed very little over time -at least in appearance-; yet may be bound to change as it attracts...

Executive Chef Tom Aikens from London (and with two Michelin stars) will be hosted at MSA (Istanbul Culinary Arts Institute) this weekend. Tom Aikens started working with Pierre Koffmann at the La Tante Claire when he was 22 years old. After a brief divergence and stray with Richard Neat at Londra Pied...

The first and original branch of Mezzaluna, its Nisantasi branch, has been closed down. Mezzaluna has been serving Turkish Italian cuisine lovers since about 15 years. Its Nisantasi branch was the first of its kind and a kind that marked the start of classy wining and dining in Nisantasi. The management...

We just finished off a month of lots of fine eating -Christmas and New Year’s following the Bayram from the month before. So, let’s focus on lunches -rather than big dinners… I have no intention to write a very long list of places here and I will thus limit your choices to three of...

If you ask me, next to diamonds are the macarons of Laduree as best friends to a lady, girl, woman… Therefore, it is a big deal for the ladies in Istanbul that Laduree has finally opened up “stores” here. The first two stores of Laduree (we are hoping that there may be more) are in Bebek and...

Kahve Dunyasi, which is translated as the Coffee World, is the so-called local Starbucks. Offering a wide variety of coffee as in Starbucks (cold or hot), Kahve Dunyasi has been founded in 2004. Its first branch was in Eminonu, in the vicinity of Egyptian Spice Bazaar. The founder is a Turkish male persona...