Fatih is for meat lovers

LIlly took this shot of me talking to an Istanbul butcher last night as we went on the hunt for roast lamb. We only have a few days left in Turkey and we wanted to make sure that we made time for tandir. This is a general term for lamb slow cooked in a closed pit. Essentially this is Turkey's version of NC whole hog bbq. To find the best we went to the Fatih neighborhood to "little Kurdistan" an area where you can find many eateries cooking in the style of the far east of Turkey.

Here's a shot of the a Fatih neighborhood street. Lots of locals drinking tea next to a ruined roman aquaduct. The food we wanted in particular is called buryan kebap. for this a whole lamb is hung and smoked in a pit for hours...


 


then diced (also like NC BBQ) and served on flat bread. 

We found all this at Sur Ocakbasi.Here is Lilly with one of the cooks. You can see the hagning sides of meat behind her.

Like all good bbq from any country what makes buryan so tasty is the near perfect ratio of fat to meat. A little salty, a little greasy, a lot of delicious.

 And our meal was perfectly finished with another eastern Turkish delight icecream covered in a warm shell of fried corn meal and dried fruit.

The only thing better than the meal was the logo for the restuarant. You can see it is a picture of a kid inside a watermellon rind.