A typical Breakfast in Turkey consists of bread , cheese , olives , eggs and jam , besides tea , milk and fruit juice . Also different types of soup can presented in alternative like ezogelin , suzme mercimek , yayla in breakfast . Sometimes , there is also pogaca (flaky) , burek (flan) and simit (savory roll covered with sesame seed) . Turkish tea (cay) is very important for drinking after every meal . In lunch , the main meal served can be either meat or vegetables with minced meat or meat balls , boiled and pounded wheat or pasta and rice , besides soup , vegetable and dessert . Yoghurt , cacik (which is yoghurt mixed with cucumber) and stewed fruit can also be served with the meal . Coban salad (green salad) which consists of different types of summer season vegetables is also preferable . The dinner meal is light and usually consists of olive oil meals besides soup , and milk desserts .
Kebaps and Pide (Turkish Pizza) are basically the two main types of food with each having many different variations making every variation a different dish by itself . Kebaps has three main variations which are Doner , Kofte and Shish . Doner is usually cheap and is made from big turning spit of lamb
or chicken cut into slices of meat . It is usually served in a half loaf with raw onions and tomato . It may be served with rice and chips (but usually both cold) and bread . Kofte on the other hand is lamb meatballs which are made in different shapes and sizes with a rich variety of kofte recipes , and are usually grilled . There are many restaurants serving kofte in many places and specially in larger towns where you'll find kofte vans on the busier streets opening till the early hours of the morning . Shish is either lamb , beef or chicken meat that is cut in cubes and grilled on wooden skewers . Shish is also served in the same way as doner and is considered cheap as street food that shouldn't cost more than a couple of quid even somewhere that fancies itself . One other variation of shish is the Cop kebap where smaller pieces of lamb are used instead and typically a portion of Cop is 4 or 5 skewers of meat bits .
Some more interesting variations of Kebaps that may sound new to the visitor are Iskender which is served in many restaurants in
Istanbul
and is considered a strong contender for King of Kebaps . Iskender is usually slices of doner , put on a base of sliced flat bread
and covered with tomato sauce . It will be served with yoghurt and should have a hot butter sauce poured over the top . Good Iskender restaurants use a quality meat and even the best restaurants have very reasonable prices . Adana kebap is also common and composed of very spiced and hot minced meat pattie that is cooked on a flat metal spit over a grill and served with bread and salad . Testi kebap is another variation which is Anatolian speciality . Small pieces of lamb or chicken are cooked in a mushroomy , oniony sauce . It is usually cooked in a sealed clay pot which will be broken open at the table so that you can eat its contents fresh . Beyti is a variety of durum or rolled kebap which is served as a snack or a full meal . It is usually an Adana type spiced meat pattie , rolled in a thin bread and then sliced . This is usually served with a high garlic content , bulgar (cracked wheat) and yoghurt .
Pide (Turkish pizza) is another Turkish food which is very popular and consists of long thin banana shaped bread , rolled from a small ball of dough and covered with the topping of your choice and slammed into a large , solid fuel burning oven for about 10 minutes . The
pide is then sliced up and served hot . A normal sized pide would cost about $2 . The most common toppings covering pide are Kasarli (kasharla) – which is yellow cheese topping (it can usually contain also tomatoes and green peppers added to it , but you may have to ask for that nicely) , Kiymali(kimarla) which is lightly spiced mince lamb and tomato topping , Sucuklu(sujuklu} which is slices of spicy Turkish sausage , Yumurtlu that is egg with a little cheese , Karasik(karashuk} – which contains all of the above toppings scattered in unpredictable proportions over the surface of the bready treat , Kusbasili (kushbashala} – which is literally birds heads (in reality small chunks of lamb in a spicy tomato type context) . In addition to all these variations , you can also ask for any combinations of the previous toppings to be used instead , for instance the most common combination may be Kusbasili and kasarli with a portion of crushed chilies .
Restaurants serving Turkish food and dishes are found in almost all the areas that are frequented by tourists . You will find different types of restaurants and different levels of service quality . You may also prefer to seek out the more authentic places where service is 5 star . Whatever type of restaurant you may prefer , just make sure that anywhere selling food has a price list , which is an obligation by law , and as long as you know how much you're going to pay , it will be difficult to be ripped off .
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