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Turkistan Asevi

Istanbul, Istanbul, Turkey

Turkistan Asevi is a Turkish restaurant located on a street just behind the Blue Mosque. We chose to eat there because it was conveniently located where we were, and they had a menu with both Turkish and English displayed outside the restaurant.

The restaurant featured an outdoor patio area (in addition to indoor seating). Like everywhere in Turkey, everybody smoked, so we chose to go early and eat outdoors where there was better ventilation.

Cost

Items were comparatively priced to other Turkish restaurants. Kebap's ranged between 12-15 YTL. They had Turkish Pizza (which we did not try) for 8 YTL.

Items Ordered

Flat Bread

We were presented with some flat bread after placing our order. That was a nice touch. The bread was white bread, and fairly tough - like most bread we had in Istanbul.

Tea

We ordered a glass of hot tea for 2 YTL, because it was a little bit chilly outside. The tea was typical black tea. I was disappointed with how small it was for 2 YTL.

Soguk Ayranli Corba

Yoghourt soup (served cold) with chickpeas, barley, and mint

The soup was actually served luke warm, and it tasted like Saffron, which makes us think that it was possibly the "Safranli Harput Dugun Corbasi" soup. ...but there was no meat in it, so we couldn't tell what it was. The soup was pretty good though.

Lamb Kebap

The lamb had a nice flavor. The green pepper that was included wasn't actually very spicy (maybe I was just getting used to them). The rice was plain, but went well with the lamb. The dish also came with an onion salad, and shredded red cabbage (or shredded beets - we couldn't tell). The portion was fairly small, with only a few pieces of meat.

Dress

Casual - we wore jeans and t-shirts.

Service

Our waiter spoke enough English that we were able to make our order by pointing at the menu. That worked out well enough. Nothing else was note worthy. The restaurant did not accept credit cards.