Istanbul: The First Night--Meyhane Meyhem

I first read about the meyhane tradition in a book on Turkish history and culture called Crescent and Star. (Side note: Is the title devoid of articles (as in "the" or "a") because Turkish doesn't have articles either? Who knows?). Anyway, the writer, Stephen Kinzer, wrote about the meyhane experience with such poetic rapture, that I found myself reading it to my dad (a chef) in a near frenzy, unable to contain my excitement at the culinary experience I hoped to have once I arrived in Turkey.

In what I'm finding to be a common experience here, I ended up having this incredible meal simply by following a bunch of people around on some unknown adventure. Leanna, the colleague I stayed with in Istanbul, took me to meet some Turkish friends of hers who were graduating from a CELTA program. The twenty-or-so of them were having a graduation dinner and invited us to join. The cost was 50 lira (about $36) for unlimited food and alcohol. It was a bit pricey, but we decided to join.

It wasn't until a half an hour later, after winding our way through the loud, crushing crowds of the Taksim area of Istanbul, after climbing seven flights of stairs and ending up on a roof-top terrace, that I found myself getting served plate after plate of meze (like Turkish tapas) and realized I was living out my little dream.

An evening at the meyhane is centered around the Turkish drink, rakı, a kind of anise-based drink that is a mix between sambuca and diesel fuel. I don't drink much at all, but a lot of people find it quite intense (not just me!), with a heavy burn on the way down. At the same time, this is what people also love about the drink as well. For my first foray in the world of rakı, the waiter filled my glass with a third full of the potent alcohol, then added water to the rest to make the drink suddenly milky and opalescent. You can see me having my virgin sip of rakı the picture above, shortly followed by only a few more sips, then a request for white wine. Sorry, Turks, I guess I side more with the Italians when it comes to my preferred alcohol with food.

To describe the meal that followed, I have to include the passage from Crescent and Star that originally worked me into such a frenzy. Forgive the lengthy post.

"Meze usually comes in waves. The first will include salad, thick slabs of white cheese, smoked eggplant purée and honeydew melon. What comes next depends on the chef's whim. There might be a selection of cooked, cooled vegetables, or small dolma, which are peppers stuffed with rice, currants and pine nuts, and their close cousins, sarma, made from grape or cabbage leaves. After the next pause might come spicy red lentil balls, mussels on the half shell, mashed beans with lemon sauce, puréed fish roe, yogurt seasoned with garlic and dill, raw tuna fillets, poached mackerel with hazelnut paste or an explosively flavorful dish made of baby eggplants stuffed with garlic cloves, tomatoes, sliced onion and parsley. The last is called Imam Bayıldı, meaning 'the Imam fainted.'" (Jennie: I had this and it was AMAZING.)

"After this comes piping-hot börek, delicate pastries filled with feta cheese and sometimes also spinach, diced chicken, ground lamb or veal, pistachios, walnuts or whatever else is lying around the kitchen...Turkey's ethnic vitality shines through as the evening proceeds. Kebabs and other meze made from meat recall the Central Asian steppes from which nomadic Turkic tribes migrated to Asia Minor, now called Anatolia, a thousand years ago. With them come hummus from Arabia, shredded chicken with walnuts from Caucasus, diced liver from Albania (Jennie: YUCK) and cooked cheese thickened with corn flour from coastal villages along the Black Sea. Then comes the crowning glory, the seafood, a gift from the Greeks, who for millennia did all the cooking along what is now Turkey's Aegean coast. Rakı sharpens the taste of all food, but its magic works best with fish. An old proverb calls rakı the pimp that brings fish and men together for acts of love.

"...Such a meal is a microcosm of Turkey. It is an astonishingly rich experience, but yields its secrets slowly. Patrons at the meyhane, like all Turks, confront an ever-changing mosaic, endless variations on a theme. Each meze tastes different, has its oen color, aroma, texture, and character. The full effect is comparable to that of a symphony, complete with melodies, different rhythms, pacing and flashes of virtuosity, all contained within an overarching structure."

See a short clip of our meyhane meyhem here, accompanied by local musicians, and later, lots of dancing.