With my conservative and fearful palate, I was glad not to have to attempt the brains and ankle soup. Mark seems to have polished it off quickly enough whilst on a 'gez', which I understand translates something like a walk about or a trip out. He went to see some wonderful tombs near to Ankara with his new friends. Most of the cafe and restaurant food here is very good. Unlike the Brits, however, Turks seem to like their own food and I haven't seen any Chinese, Indian, Mexican or Italian restaurants. We did go to a very nice Uighur restaurant on the second Sunday we were here. Uighurs, living mostly in North-West China, share a common Turkic history and unsurprisingly their food is reasonably similar. There are Burger Kings and MacDonalds but they are far outnumbered by the Turkish eating places. There are separate restaurants that specialize in Kavalti, which is breakfast, simit cafes which serve tea and pastries and the ubiquitous kebab shops and any number of variations on any of these themes. A favouite cafe that we shall return to is named 'Flowers and coffee'. I was wondering how that worked and then it became clear when we bought flowers one day and we were invited next door for coffee. A chance to make friends, so Mark braved going into a coffee shop. Its hard to get tea in a coffee shop and its hard to get coffee in a tea shop, and we have given up trying to get milk with our tea....that is impossible. On our gez today, again on the hunt for lost Byzantium, we returned to the kebab restaurant we discovered last Saturday. The suffering people of Ukraine are very much on peoples' hearts and we saw some wearing Ukrainian flags. That particular kebab shop has the best food we have had so far; simple but really lovely and it cost under £4 in total for both of us. We purposely return to the same places to build up friendships and to practice our very limited Turkish. Tonight we are taking our lovely Tajik friend, with some other young people (to make ourselves feel young!!) to the Iranian restaurant. Mark has made friends with the owners who are a family of three brothers and a sister. A mixture of Urdu, English and Turkish only goes so far, hence our Tajik friend who speaks Dari, like our Iranian friends, so we will be able to talk through a translator. The extravagent eating ends on Monday as language school is starting!!
Comments