Turkish Coffee in a Turkish coffee shop!
A funny thing happened to me on the last night there. I was coming back from the old district using public transportation and was walking along the main shopping street in Beyoglu, and found a shop with wonderful desserts in the window. After I had show a number of photos of the baklava and other desserts in the window, the Turkish couple who noticed me shooting pictures said to me: now, you must go in and eat these (desserts)!
Not knowing any better, I said, is this good? To which they said: yes, it's a local favorite, it's very famous.
If they considered it good, then I figured I couldn't go wrong.
While my French colleagues were 20 kilometers away dining at a 60EUR a head fish restaurant looking out on the Bosphorous, I was in the middle of Istanbul, munching an (authentic) Turkish Doner Kebab sandwich, followed by ... Burma Kadayif (deep fried angel-hair pastry filled with roasted pistachios and honey ... yum!) and Turkish coffee, which I can only describe as coffee with the consistency of mud, that is, silt filling your mouth the same time as the espresso-like coffee.
I was so impressed with the dessert that I bought two to take home with me to France so that I might enjoy it with hot tea one cold evening after dinner ...
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LINKS
The store I ate at was:
http://www.saraymuhallebicisi.com/ (only in Turkish)
I can't vouch for the quality of the food here, but anyone going to New York in the future wanna try this out for me? Search for "Turkish restaurant New York" in Google and you'll get a couple of other suggestions.