Doner. Lamb and chicken are avail­able on these ver­tical spits on what feels like every street corner in Turkey. I have already pledged to Laura that one day our BBQ will include one of these. It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine.

This is the bread and butter of Turkish lunch. Okay, maybe a cliched food meta­phor is not the best way to describe a totally dif­fer­ent type of food, that con­tains neither bread nor butter, but hey... Anyway, these Tavuc Durum (chicken doners) can be had for about 2–3 TL (about $1.50–2.25 CDN) all over Turkey. Sliced fresh off a BBQ spit, the meat is usually deli­cious, and is simply presen­ted with tomato and lettuce, may­on­naise, and ketchup (“Hold the ketchup.”).

Likewise, you can usually get a Tavuc or Et (lit­er­ally “meat”) doner in a half loaf of bread. Meat, of course, means lamb in Turkey, which is ubi­quit­ous. Usually the half-loaf sand­wiches are even less expens­ive than the durum variety. In the back­ground you can see an Ayran — a yoghurt/water drink that is very popular here. It is kind of salty, but becomes a rapidly acquired taste and is very deli­cious by your second or third one.

Typical Turkish salad. Decent res­taur­ants provide salad like this free with your meal. As well, bread is provided with vir­tu­ally every dish ordered. The salad is a refresh­ing mix of semi-sweet pickled carrots and cabbage, and a mixed greens variety that often tastes of pungent, palette-cleaning cil­antro or parsely.

Behold the mighty Pide! Turkish pizza (pide) comes in all sorts of vari­et­ies, but is gen­er­ally a simpler con­coc­tion than North American pizza. The dough is semi-crispy with just the right amount of chewy. It is shaped like an elong­ated foot­ball and folded over at the edges. Most decent pide res­taur­ants cook their pides in wood-fired brick ovens. Don’t miss out on pide if you make it to Turkey.

The mixed meat and cheese pide. Toppings tend to include white cheese or goat cheese, ground lamb, sausage, and occa­sion­ally veget­ables or mushrooms.

The Iskender kebap. This is a spe­cialty of the town of Bursa, but is avail­able all over Turkey. Named for it’s ori­ginal creator (who is himself named after Alexander the Great — “Iskender”), the Iskender Kebap is heart attack on a plate. This rich dish was a once-is-enough exper­i­ence for Laura and I, although Turks seem to love it. On the bottom is a piece of soggy bread, with strips of Et (lamb meat) layered on top (this one is actu­ally chicken — I was suf­fer­ing lamb over­dose at this point in the trip). The whole thing is drenched in tomato sauce, butter and yoghurt. Garnish with hot peppers to taste.

Turkish Menemen (some­times called Melemen). This “Turkish Omelette” is more like runny scrambled eggs mixed with toma­toes and peppers. Although often a break­fast dish, it is also avail­able for lunch and dinner. As you might suspect, it sort of tastes like a semi-spicy tomato sauce mixed with eggs.

Wait a sec, you say. That’s just a ham­burger! Well, not quite. In Turkey, kofte (lamb meat­balls) are second only to kebap as the national meat dish. These things are gen­er­ally mixed with peppers or other spices and are far more deli­cious than the average beef meat­ball. They are served alone, as part of full meals, or in sand­wiches like this one.