Restaurant: The Bazaar
Location: Izmir Turkiye
Date: June 20, 2023
Cuisine: Turkish street food
Rating: Hotel restaurant, but good
This meal consists of food from 3 different places in the Izmir Bazaar.
Pictured here is a Pide restaurant that provided the Cheese Pide below. Most of the savory food came from a homestyle place. The desserts from a third.
The homestyle place showed most of its dishes in casserole dishes for selection. They are then plated and heated. Or perhaps they are warm in the casaroles. This is very similar to what I saw in Greece in the late 1980s.
On the table were some peppers.
Artichoke, dill, potatoes etc. This must be the more old fasioned version of the dish we had the previous night.
Vegetables with yogurt.
Stuffed peppers and grape leaves with yogurt. Both were warm and stuffed with seasoned rice and vegetables.
Sour Meat Balls. Beef meat balls in a sour yogurt sauce with a light dill flavor. Quite delicious actually.
Mackerel Soup. This very yummy soup had a strong, but delicious, mackerel taste and a good hit of dill.
Lamb Shank. Doesn’t look like much but the tender and fatty meat was delicious. #Izmir #Turkey #lamb #shank
Chicken au Grfatin. While ugly as well, this “chicken casserole” was quite delicious. Mildly cheesy with a bit of a bechemel thing going on.
Cheese Pide.
This vendor sold what I think are various kinds of Revani (syrupy cake).
Walnut Cake. I believe this is a semolina flour cake with walnut and soaked in a honey-like syrup.
The Walnut Revani was served with a blob of “whipped cream” — more like clotted cream. It was pretty insanely delicious too. It has some taste and texture resemblance to Tres Leches Cake.
A different variant, maybe the one shown in the round pan.
A pistachio variety.
They have the dense Turkish ice cream as well.
A huge scoop of Chocolate Ice Cream.