Turkey and Syria: A Culinary Explanation

I admit it, I got REALLY tired of the food while I was in Turkey and Syria, especially breakfast. At first though, I was pretty excited. The photo above depicts the typical breakfast in Turkey and Syria. Cucumber, tomato, cheese, olive, bread, and maybe a little jam or honey. In Turkey, for whatever reason, it seemed to often come with a slice of bologna, I have no idea why, and in Syria, there was usually hummus and lebneh. But that's where the trouble began. Hummus and lebneh were served with EVERY meal. Seriously. I like a little variety throughout the day, and to eat the same thing three times in a row is just too much. By the end of the trip, I dreaded breakfast. Coffee also started out a problem. In both Turkey and Syria, if you ordered coffee at a restaurant, you got barfy Nescafe. Come on. With all the great, thick intense coffee they have over there, the preferred version seriously was Nescafe. I don't understand. But finally, we wised up. In Turkey, we either drank tea, which really is what the locals usually drank, or, we went to some Italian cafe that appeared to be Turkey's answer to Starbucks (only better), and got nice cappucinos and americanos there. I'm sorry to say, however, that I never got to drink "Turkish" coffee in Turkey. In Syria, though, we got that straightened out.
In Adana, we had our first, and best kabob meal. It was really, really, good, and beautiful to look at. Juicy sticks of spiced ground lamb accompanied by all kinds of fresh salads to wrap in with the meat.
But then, we ended up (through no fault of our own) eating kabob for three more days. When you go to a restaurant in Syria, they don't give you a menu, because apparently, they pretty much all serve the same thing: hummus, tabbouleh, kabob (called kifteh in Syria), fattoush, baba ghanoush, lebneh, olives. So that's what we ate. Over and over again. I'm still off kabob for the time being.

Oh, yeah, and in addition to all the stuff I mentioned as typical Syrian restaurant fare, they also always served french fries. I don't know why, but they were always there.
Now on to the Syrian favorites. I had quite possibly the best ice cream of my life there. Sorry, no photo, but you know what ice cream looks like. It was three different flavors: pineapple sherbet on top, then pistachio, and finally almond-cardamom on the bottom. Holy, crap, it was good. FORGET GELATO. This stuff was way better.
My favorite dinner in Syria was at a rustic tanoor (same as tandoor) restaurant. Hot, fresh bread straight from the tanoor, as well as little pies with different fillings: spinach, cheese, roasted peppers, or zait ou zattar.

They also served a really good fresh cheese.

Finally, dinner at my aunt and uncle's house. Stuffed grape leaves; saffron rice with eggplant, lamb and almonds; stewed peas, and fish. Unfortunately, our meal timing that day was bad: we didn't have lunch until 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and then were supposed to eat this huge dinner at 7. I had the foresight to not eat much lunch, so I was ok, but my dad, cousin, and other uncle did not, so they were passing around the zantac in preparation.


OK. Now we're back in Adana, Turkey again, and my dad wasn't feeling so hot, so I just got a little pizza-like thing from the bakery. It was good, it had olives, corn, cheese, and peppers on it. But it also had weird little hot dog bits on it. I don't know why the Turks are so enamored with hot dog and bologna-like substances. But it was still pretty good.
Our first dinner on the "Flower Street" in Istanbul. Basically, Turkish tapas. Little plates of this and that: stewed tomatoes and eggplant, beans, some sort of mystery vegetable that was similar to artichoke. It was ok.

Turkish sweets, which are pretty much the same as Arabic sweets.
Anything with dates they advertised as Turkish "Viagra." I've never heard of dates having that property, but whatever.
OK. Now I'm back in Germany. Really nice hotel, complete with minibar. I drank a mini-bottle of Sekt, and thoroughly enjoyed its fizzy, fermented wonder. The next morning, breakfast was the great German breakfast buffet. Pretty much anything Western-breakfast related you could want was there, and it was a welcome change.