we're in Istanbul, Turkey the food culture here will blow your mind and
we're so excited to be filming a bunch of food videos here, let's get food
hunting for this one Istanbul's food scene is exciting, varied
and delicious, in this five-part series we're hunting down the best local
Turkish food and eating where the locals eat, this is our fourth video of the
series and we're eating fresh simit a popular Turkish street food, devouring
syrup soaked baklava, finding the best fish sandwich in Istanbul and tucking
into a popular local breakfast of menemen, you don't want to miss this
video get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're
Chasing a Plate, we hope you're hungry, let's eat
we're gonna be walking all around Istanbul today to find the best local
food and we've come to our first stop it's that place right behind me with
that line out the front and it is an artisanal bakery that makes simit now
simit is a bread ring and it is a really popular snack here in Istanbul
you'll see simit carts all over the city so let's go and get one right from
the source
this simit bakery is incredible they've
got a massive oven with a lot of simit cooking away so they're taking the dough
a very sort of sticky dough forming it into the rings, dumping it in a huge pile
of sesame seeds, coating it all over every single side is getting coated with
sesame seeds and then dumped on these huge wooden boards and the boards are so that
the guy can get them into the giant oven so he's sliding a lot in at one time and
then they're all just cooking in there I'm not really sure how long they're
cooking for there's so many in there I couldn't keep track of the cooking time
but I don't think it would be that long because the heat coming out of the oven
was incredible and now I've got this simit it's really hot still straight
from the oven and look at all the sesame seeds on there, it's incredible so this
is very basic it's just bread covered in sesame seeds but these are everywhere
here in Istanbul so it's really cool to have one right from the source, let's just
break in so you can see a very just a white bread dough take off a good bit ohhh
just a nice bit of heat coming out of it
mmm
ohhhhh
oh that is so simple, so good
obviously the sesame seeds are the flavour that's what you can taste those roasted
sesame seeds that were toasted cause they've gone in the oven and then the
bread is super basic it's just a basic white bread dough and the sesame seeds are
incredible such a good earthy flavor that's really nice ohhh a little bit salty
that bread too that is good so we're gonna do what the locals do wander to our next
stop and just rip pieces of this off munch into it and walk along the harbor
to our next stop
we walked across the harbour from that side right over there to a new suburb of Istanbul
and we came to hunt down a fish sandwich called balık ekmek which basically
translates to fish bread and we really wanted to eat it from this little boat
right behind us but it is closed there is no one about so what we're gonna do is
we're gonna wander up into the old laneways of the old city of Sultanahmet
and then find our next snack and then we will revisit balık ekmek later
on in the video
we're wandering in the lane ways of a really local market and we've heard
from locals that there's a really good baklava shop nearby so let's go and get a piece
of baklava
we're at the baklava shop and the window is filled with all these amazing
different types of baklava they look incredible, let's go and order
baklava is a dessert which is made up of sheets of yufka which is a really thin
light pastry that's been soaked in sugar syrup and then interspersed
throughout the layers of pastry are loads and loads of nuts in this case
pistachio and just look at how green those pistachios are now there's a ton of
different types of baklava up in that cabinet but what they all have in
common is that they all have a really really heavy dose of pistachio added to
each dessert let's just dive into this baklava so you can see the really
delicate sheets of pastry all of those layers and then right down the bottom
there all of those pistachios and then you can see that the pastry is
sodden it's just soaking with that sugar syrup so let's just get a huge bite oh see as I
press down into the pastry all of that sugar syrup just oozing out of it alright
let's go
ohhh it looks like such a good bite
that is beautiful it's very sweet but what you can really taste are those
nuts the pistachio flavour is so strong and you can really discern the layers
of pastry so they're really light still so the top bit very light really sort of flaky
they sort of melt in your mouth and then the bottom layer of the pastry that was
really dense with the syrup just sort of oozes and melts in your mouth
it is incredible I'm gonna go for one more bite it is just so fresh all right
that's so good I love the sensation of the sugar syrup oozing out of the
baklava when it hits your tongue and I just love how the pistachios, the nuts taste really
really vibrant and fresh often the baklava that I've had in the past the nuts are almost a bit stale and old
and the pastry is just way too dense this pastry is beautiful it's really really light
and we're washing it down with a cup of cay which is just a cup of tea and it's
pretty much the Turk's national drink just tea in a beautiful little tulip glass
mmm it's perfect with this baklava which is super sweet
the cay sort of cuts through that sweetness
we're back on the hunt for the fish bpread or the fish sandwich the balık ekmek
so we've come back across the water and we're going to another place that's
been very highly recommended to us this place has been around for over 20 years
a lot of locals have said this is one of the top ones so since the first place we
tried to visit was closed this is going to be our next target for this fish
sandwich
now this video is all about local favourites so we're not probably showing
you something that you haven't seen you might have seen everything that we eat
in this video but we're showing you the real local places to go get these things
and like I said earlier this place was really well recommended and by just
looking at this fish sandwich I can see why it was brilliant watching it getting
made so it's stuffed with ingredients but I'll talk about the outside first
the wrap itself is covered in spice mix and he basted it with a special sauce so
you can see that's all sort of shiny and that sauce was dripping down off the
wrap after he painted it on with a big paint brush and really sizzling on the
grill so it looked like it had some sugars in it cause it was really
hissing and foaming as soon as it hit that grill but inside this wrap is
mackerel so fish so an oily fish and then it was pretty simple beyond that
just tomatoes there's some chilli in there so a big
red chilli which he put on the grill as well and there's some greens which I
think it's just some type of lettuce and on that is a whole lot of sauces the
main one is pomegranate molasses and then there were some other sauces on
there as well which I'm not sure what they were, whole lot of fresh lemon was
squeezed all over it and it just looks like heaven to eat
and we thought we'd come down onto the waterfront so the stand is only 20
meters from where we're sitting thought we'd come down and sit right on the water for
a fish sandwich I got to get in
Wow, mmmm
oh that fish, it's such a good flavour so mackerel is a pretty strong
tasting fish if you've not had it before but that is beautifully cooked it's um
it's just a beautiful texture breaks apart I find sometimes mackerel can dry
out if it's cooked wrong that's not dry at all it's super moist really
easy to eat and look at all those ingredients in there I want to go for
another bite because we've got this big bit of tomato and that in there behind
the tomato is the big red chilli
Oh
this is a flavour sensation, it's so good oh wow it is good that one had more of
the the pomegranate molasses as well so had more of a sweetness and a little
sourness, the chilli's not too hot at all I've got a little bit of heat coming
from that, this is unreal all that spice on the outside which after chucking a
whole lot of the spice on he just turned it on the grill so you can see it's all
charred as well so they're a little bit crunchy all those spice bits now that
I've bitten in a bit further I can see more of what's going on inside and I
remember there's a whole lot of onions got put in so you can see the onions
there look how big and juicy that chilli looks the beautiful tomato something I
love here in Turkey is the the produce it's so fresh and lively I guess is
a good word to describe it so the tomatoes taste like a tomato should
they're not just watery and and just you know gluggy like tomatoes can be we get
so used to tomatoes out of season these taste incredible the chilli's super
crunchy and then that fish just tops off all those fresh ingredients so well and
I love that he took the skin off the fish so you don't have a skin that's
hard to get through so it's really easy to eat I got to go for this corner
so this big bit of chilli, the tomato all those onions and then as much of the
spice mixture as I can there's quite a lot of different spices on there I
can't really pick what's what cause they're all moulding together there's
definitely chill, there's quite a lot of chilli flakes and that is
really tasty
oh man
Oh
that is good that mouthful was perfect I got everything in that one, a whole lot of fish
there's actually some parsley in there as well I got a bit of that in that
mouthful so I'm getting a bit of bitterness from that, chilli, this is absolutely
incredibly good
the food hunt continues and next up we've come to a really small local eatery to
eat menemen which is a Turkish scrambled eggs dish
I've got my dish of menemen in front of me so this is Turkish scrambled
eggs now it looks very different to what you and I probably think of as
scrambled eggs but the dish is made up of eggs which have been beaten over a
really high heat and then there's tomatoes and peppers and also sucuklu
inside which is Turkish sausage and it doesn't look like much but trust
me it tastes amazing and to go with it we've got some huge hunks of bread
really crusty bread and then we couldn't resist ordering one of our favourite
things in Turkey so kaymak which is clotted cream and it's served with this huge
puddle of runny honey what I'm gonna do is just rip a piece of
this bread up, it's super soft really crusty that's gonna go perfectly with the
eggs and then let's just dig in whoa look at that so it's just really really creamy and you can
see all of those ingredients mixed up in there so that's the tomato and then the
really small pieces of sausage and the eggs are just almost quite fluffy and
wet so I'm just gonna put that on top of my piece of bread
ohhh they are amazing, the eggs are really really creamy quite rich and
then you've got the sweet burst from the tomatoes which are really juicy I'm
gonna go again
load it up onto that bread, the bread is just really soft and chewy
Oh
there's a little bit of spiciness from the sausage but its sliced really
really thin so it's not overpowering and then the eggs, they're just a beautiful texture so
quite wet like I said before the mixture is quite wet and just creamy, it is
just insane
menemen is usually a breakfast food and it's 4:30 in the afternoon at the moment
but I don't mind having breakfast for afternoon tea and I don't reckon any
Turkish breakfast is complete without this magic combo so you've got the
kaymak which is clotted cream and then bal which is honey and it is just the
most beautiful combination, I just love this stuff
it is so good, it is a magic combination the kaymak as soon as it hits your tongue it
just dissolves into this creamy puddle and then you've got that beautiful sweetness
of the honey it is just perfection
another massive day of eating here in Istanbul
so that was some of the more simple dishes the stuff that you probably might
know but those were the most incredible versions of those dishes we're going to
be making a tonne more videos while we're here though, make sure you hit that
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gule gule (see you)