Bodrum food and drink guide
Traditional Turkish food with a regional flavour
It should come as no surprise that the Aegean coast's cuisine is defined by seafood. The catch typically includes Red and Grey Mullet, Sea Perch, Tuna, mackerel, turbot and Squid. Fish is generally kept simple, either barbecued or fried and arrives on a bed of parsley or dill. Seafood aside, Bodrum is located in one of Turkey 's most fecund agricultural regions, which means mouth-watering fruits and disarmingly simple yet delicious salads. When ordering fish it's best to have a nose around the kitchen first to make sure you know what you're getting. Meyhaneler Sokak, is an alley leading down to the Castle of St Peter , and as it holds half a dozen lokantas should be a safe bet to find something to suit your palate. Other specialities to look out for include:
Gozleme
Often misleadingly translated as a Turkish pancake, gozleme really has more in common with filo pastry. A fist-sized ball of dough is rolled on a low circular table until its diameter reaches that of the table, about two feet. A mixture of white goat's cheese, fresh parsley and seasoning is then crumbled on top and the whole thing cooked on what resembles a giant upside-down wok. While cooking the gozleme is folded and flipped until it ends up the shape and size of an A5 notebook, whose pages are interwoven with the crumbly white cheese.
Menemen
Available all over Turkey in various guises, menemen comes best dressed on the Turquoise Coast where its constituent vegetables are among the country's finest. It's a disarmingly simple dish, and similarly addictive. To a ragout of fried peppers, onions and tomatoes - eggs are cracked and the dish lightly scrambled. Finished with a little salt, a lot of black pepper and a mountain of crispy fresh bread.
Pide
Stretched to the shape of an elongated rugby ball pide is a Turkish take on pizza. Baked in a charcoal-fired stone oven pide comes in three varieties: karsali is topped with ground lamb, paynirli with cheese and karasik is mix of the previous two often with room left over for slices of cured beef sausage. It arrives under a bush of flat-leaf parsley and is accompanied by lemon wedges.
Imam Bayildi
Legend has it that after a day's fasting an Imam (religious teacher) was so overcome with this dish that he collapsed. Literally translating as 'the Imam fainted' Imam bayildi is a dish of aubergines stuffed with peppers and onions then baked. Some speculate that the real reason for the Imam blacking out was the chef's inability to all but drown the aubergines in olive oil, the dish's inimitable signature.
Alabalik
The fast flowing melt-water streams of the Tarsus Mountains prove the ideal home for alabalik , or trout. With fish as fresh as these anything more than a couple of minutes on a barbecue and a squeeze of lemon would be a crime; one the Turks aren't prepared to commit. The best trout are found by following the mountainous coastal roads and stopping at a lokanta. Most of these small family-run restaurants also do a line in another local speciality: jars of pine honey crammed with pistachios, almonds and walnuts.
