Food · 7 min read
Turkish food: the seven dishes a UK traveller cannot leave without trying
30 January 2026
Beyond the doner. The mantı, the kunefe, the slow-cooked lamb, and the fish that you will dream about.
Mezze, properly
Mezze is not a starter. It is the meal. Twelve to twenty small dishes — cold (haydari, atom, hummus), hot (sigara borek, midye dolma, kalamar), pickled, grilled. Order half cold, half hot, and slow your evening down. The best mezze places do not have menus.
Manti
Tiny lamb dumplings the size of a fingernail, served in garlic yogurt with chilli butter. The Kayseri version is the original. There is a London version (Mangal in Dalston) that is good. The Cappadocia version made by a grandmother who has rolled a million of them, that is the one.
Slow-cooked lamb
Kuzu tandir is lamb shoulder cooked in a sealed clay pot for 12 hours over wood. The meat falls off the bone and tastes faintly of smoke. Order it 24 hours in advance — the good places make a fixed number per day.
Fish, simply
On the coast, ask what came in this morning. Whatever it is, grilled with lemon and a glass of raki. The Istanbul restaurants by the Bosphorus do this beautifully. So does any little harbour shack in Bodrum.
Kunefe
Stretchy white cheese baked between layers of shredded wheat, soaked in syrup, dusted with crushed pistachio. Eaten hot. Antakya does it best.
Pide
Turkish flatbread pizza, boat-shaped, baked in a wood oven. The lamb-and-cheese version is the gateway. The kashar-and-egg breakfast version is what you wish more breakfast cuisines had.
Baklava
Pistachio-stuffed phyllo from Gaziantep is the best in the world. We bring back two boxes from every trip. Karakoy Gulluoglu in Istanbul is your second-best option.
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