Every culture has this type of dish and in Turkiye, it’s called, “gözleme” (gooz-le-may) is often called a Turkish crepe, it is not a crepe as the dough is different. Gözleme is made with a yeast based dough and the dough has to rise. Crepes are not made with yeast.
The small balls of dough are completely equal in size.
It’s more akin to a quesadilla (This town has all the ingredients for Tex-Mex food, but that’s a different story).
One that is almost done and one that is waiting for much more butter.
These photos are from a place called Eylul Bufe. I think my whole breakfast was around 340 Turkish Lira (about $12).
Usually this style of flatbread is done fresh. It’s best eaten when warm and fresh off the hot plate.
One day, I set out to find a well known “pilaf” eatery in old Adana. I had read that they were often sold out so one should go early. I got there at around ten thirty in the morning. They told me, “Come in, come in” but as there was no food, I said that I would come back after they opened at 11 am.
A quiet street in the inner warrens of Old Adana.
As I needed to find something to do for a half hour, I turned down an alley… in broad daylight, I generally do not feel apprehensive. The old streets of Adana are usually empty, sometimes foul smelling, worn down, and there is always a tea “shop” to be had. Today’s alleys were much the same but in one there was a man putting something in a grinder. It looked like green powder or grass powder. He looked annoyed at me so I did not stop to ask him what he was doing.
Wood stools.
Another thing I find fascinating is the variety of small stools. Today, I saw a saddle style that I had never seen before. In general, even if there is no tea shop or cafe, there will still be some stools and flat surface in or around every place of business. There are an innumerable tea boys and men running around delivering tea. Tea is a social habit, sort of like a handshake, in Adana.
Always tea.
While I was wandering around, I suddenly noticed raw meat on display, from lungs, stomach, testes, feet, and head. The heads were being blowtorched. Not sure how those heads were going to be prepared as one can get head soup, head sandwich, head cold cuts, and roast head. So many ways and apparently the cheek, tongue, and brain are the tasty bits. Am I right? (This makes me think of a “cute” street vendor in Istanbul who has been going viral because of his looks. He isn’t all that cute… anyway, there is a shop selling sheep head here in Adana that has employed that same marketing strategy. They have hired a cute “chef” who preps the sandwiches. Since they started featuring him, the views on their social media have increased exponentially.)
Sheep’s heads. And a woman.
As I walked through the meat market, sellers were calling out, “Welcome,” but I was not interested in buying any meat. I was also trying to make sure that I didn’t slip and fall on the slick tiles. Also, I noticed that there were only men shopping and only men working. I guess everywhere, butchery is a male dominated business. But, I was also in “the Egyptian Mall” and that could also be the reason that there were not many women around.
The meat market.
On the side streets of the meat market, there were lots of shops selling everything for grilling and cooking meat from knife stores to grinding equipment stores and some that sell everything but the meat. Aside from meat, there were the usual cell phone stores, sneaker stalls, cigarette stalls, and oddly, fake money stalls…
A grilling store.
In this warren of alleys, one could easily get lost, but not really because this area is only one city block. Eventually, one pops out on a “modern Adana” street again.
A street in the old town of Adana.
Another time, I’ll talk about the pilaf eatery and the dramatic stories of love, family, and money woes from some of the staff there.
Adana is known for its food. It has contenders for most foodie city in Turkiye from the likes of Gazientep, but more on that later. There are certain dishes one must try when in Adana, so let’s discuss them here.
So good, it’s named after the city — the Adana kebab (or kebap). It’s made of chopped lamb mixed with spices, bits of tomato, and fat to keep it moist. Served with roasted tomatoes and chili peppers. Usually jalapeño. One makes a sandwich as one wishes. Also on the table before the kebab, are plates of salads that you can eat on their own or put in your wrap. See the ones in the background of the liver photo below. Each place will make their own but they tend to be the same, onion, tomatoes, parsley, pickles, etc.
Adana kebab.
Liver for breakfast with raki. If you are going to have it, try it here where it will be fresh and good. The liver is tender and not strong in flavor. When part of a wrap, you can hardly taste it at all. It is normally eaten after a night out, so from 5 am on.
Liver kebab.
Fermented purple turnip juice, şalgam (“shawl-gawm”) is sour and can be served spicy. It is quiet tart so can cut through anything you are eating. Served with pickled purple turnips (that look like carrots) or other pickles. Tastes like sour pickle juice. Made with a fermentation process sort of like kombucha. But doesn’t have fizz. Just sourness.
Fermented turnip juice.
Şirdan is so special that I think that it should be considered a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. Along with the other dishes I have mentioned.
Şirdan, (“Sheer-dan”) stuffed lower sheep intestine. This is the one that is most difficult to stomach (punny!) as the smell is strong. Make sure to go to a place recommended by locals. It will taste better if you are drunk and hungry. Both men and women like this dish but it is a distinctly Adanali dish. It is a bit like haggis but is filled with only rice. The flavor of the broth and the rice is a gentle soup flavor. The texture of the sheep’s intestine is rubbery but less so at one end. Usually one removes the string and puts salt, cumin, chili spice, and lemon juice on it — before shoving it down as fast as one can. It is meant to be eaten with two hands and gobbled.
A sewn up stuffed sheep intestine.
Like in all cultures, every part of the animal is eaten. In Italy, they eat spleen sandwich and tripe. In other cultures, these parts are turned into sausages, or as Dickens called them, “bags of mystery”… or in this case, rice.
Many people will never try these dishes. There are many other things to eat that are much easier… but at least try the kebab.
Adana is closer to Aleppo than it is to Istanbul. Adana is a hot dusty sandy city of two-three million people. There are all the elements of a big city but also the feel of a small outpost on the border.
A 24-7 bakery in old Adana.
Adana is a city of contrasts. People go about their lives. This was surprising to me. I love it.
A subsidized bread hut. Dogs are common on the streets.
Like in Peru, there are mototaxis, like Bangladesh, you see women who are covered up driving mototaxis.
Mainly, for me, it is a city without tourists. Or very few. The main tourist season is during the orange blossom festival in April. But otherwise, the tourist attractions in Adana are the Adana kebab, small old town, the Roman bridge, the enormous mosque, and the Varda bridge outside town. Compared to the frenzy of tourism in Rome, this is a nice break.
A kebab shop on every corner.
In ways, Adana reminds me of Dhaka. Both in weather and religion. But, Adana is not as humid as Dhaka. Adana has almost no mosquitoes but it has flies. But in Adana, there are air conditioning units everywhere. Oddly, cloves are prevalent in both cultures. In Dhaka, cloves were in much of the food. Here in Adana, one can chew on them to freshen the breath. There is almost no pork to be found. Coffee shops abound. But, in Adana, there are many places where people drink alcohol.
Boys playing in an industrial, poorer, part of town.
Adana even reminds me of Dhaka in some of the architecture. Aside from the architecture, there are people on the streets, playing backgammon, drinking tea, running after trucks… Also the love of “holiday lights” is a similar trait of these cities. Almost every city in the world enjoys stringing up festive lights during certain seasons. Same here.
A corner in a rich part of town near the old town.
But mostly the traffic in the city is similar to Lima, Cairo, or Dhaka. Dhaka still leads in most “interesting” traffic-wise. Nothing compares to Dhaka traffic. Nothing.
A view of the lake between new construction in the wealthy north part of town.
While this town is not that spread out, six or seven miles (8-10 kms) can seem very far and takes about 25 minutes by taxi. Like New York City, the neighborhoods change every ten blocks or so. Along the lake to the north, new complexes are rising like entire building blocks, all jostling for a view of the lake.
Are the locals, the Adanalis, friendly? Yes, but not overly so. It is polite to say hello, “Merhaba” when you meet a new person, enter a store, enter a taxi, etc. It is true that the locals will almost always offer you tea or coffee, if you spend enough time in their shop. It is a normal part of life. A tea stop. I have been here long enough that I find it odd when I don’t get offered “chai” at the end or beginning of meals and transactions. To accommodate the tea culture, there are always tea vendors (often boys of ten) running around delivering tea or collecting empties. While the locals are polite (although there are lots who simply stare) in general, I would not say that they are overly friendly. They are a bit reserved. They go about their lives and expect you to do so too, without being bothered by them.
A place to sit outside, to eat a kebab, or a wrap, or drink tea.
So, what’s it like in Adana? It’s chaotic, hot, dusty, cold, meaty (they love meat), and free of tourists. Also, almost free of foreigners other than refugees. There are some university students and some Americans (due to the air force base) but one rarely ever sees anyone “foreign” out and about. The locals still find it interesting when a foreigner gets in their taxi, or store, or restaurant, or walks down their street. One guy asked me, “Where are you going?” I guess out of concern? At other places, I have met that famous muslim or middle eastern hospitality where I am offered tea and delights and where they refuse to let me pay.
I love Adana sign in north Adana, a wealthy area.
Maybe I’m still in the honeymoon period where things seem so nice (and it is winter so I’m not boiling from the inside of my head whenever I step outside), but so far… I find Adana delightful.
Everyone loves decorations. All over Turkiye, you will see lights with stars and moons all over town.
At a gas station.
But, it is also easy to find Christmas decorations depicting Santa Claus or Christmas trees. Many Turks are tolerant and open minded and as they like to remind me, there is not a state religion in Turkiye.
The fries at Barks are the crispiest I’ve had in Adana.
I was trying to learn how to ask for my fries to be fried crispy and crunchy, and accidentally learned a slang word.
Citar (Che-ter): Crispy as in how I like my fries. Apparently also slang for a hot young thang. But for fries, I was told to ask for “citar citar olsun” and it worked.
Fries are a normal part of any “khavalti” — Turkish breakfast. To the left is menemen, a shakshouka-like egg dish.
I also learned that “mashallah” which is used joyfully as “god willing” is also slang for “fat.”
Cig kofte are uncooked balls, here made with wheat and served like a lettuce wrap.
It seems at times like everything has the same name. The word, “köfte,” is the word for meatball. But, it’s not always made of meat. And it’s not always a ball. It seems like köfte refers to a ground meat formed into a ball, lump, or along a skewer (to make the famous Adana kebab).
A really famous dish of köfte is more of a hand formed polygon? I was out to eat at a local cafeteria and I ordered the Çiğ köfte which is raw meat balls. Most places do not make them with meat. They are made with bulgur, which is cracked wheat. This is because eating raw meat involves a higher risk and many restaurants do not want to take that risk. But, at the local place that we went to, one of my colleagues was a big cautious about the raw vegan balls because they are formed by hand.
The ones in the photo were delicious. Slightly tangy and spicy. Served in a lettuce wrap, they become a vegan or vegetarian raw food ball. It’s actually very modern food even though the history goes way back.
İçli köfte made by a Turkish mom.
Stuffed meatballs are also famous. Called İçli köfte in Turkish, these stuffed balls are called kibbeh in the middle east. One can make them with the pointy ends so that they look like lanterns or as perfectly domed balls like the ones made for me by a Turkish mom.
The ones I got were the kind that one boils like a dumpling. They were stuffed with ground meat. The exterior was made of bulgar wheat. These can also be fried.
I like Adana. I like living in Adana. And the flies in Adana like me. The moment I step outside, the fly is dive bombing straight at the corner of my mouth. (I now see why ladies of olden times wore gauze around their heads.) When we go out to eat if outdoors (and sometimes indoors), there will be a fly that will start to buzz around our food and our heads.
If you recall, I carried mosquito rackets with me in Dhaka. While I have yet to see a mosquito here in Adana, I decided that I needed a fly racket to defend myself and my khavalti (Turkish breakfast) from the flies. I bought an electrified fly racket at Koctas (like Home Depot), the home goods store. It didn’t seem to work. Maybe because it was too small and cute. I bought another.
But, more than that, I had seen that one of the bakeries used a table fly fan to keep the flies off their baked goods. I went hunting for it. The electronic stores did not have it. The home goods store did not have it. No one had it. I had to buy it on Trendyol, an online shopping site, and when I got it, I went on another adventures to find D3 batteries. It turns out that one can use two AA batteries instead. I was in the store and when the employees helped me with finding the batteries that worked, they seemed a bit disappointed for me that the fan was not going fast. I used Google translate to explain that this was not a fan to keep me cool but a fan to keep the flies off my food.
I don’t think they believed me.
A note about online shopping. The first couple of items that I bought online, the delivery person called to get the verification code, then hunted me down to hand deliver to me. A third item required me to go to the post office for retrieval. Now, Trendyol is growing accustomed to me and they just hand the items to my doorman. I am not endorsing Trendyol but if you use them through the internet, the site will get translated and that makes shopping easier. If you don’t speak Turkish.
Türkiye, the nation, had the UN officially recognize the spelling of its name in English as Türkiye (tur-key-YAY) in 2022 to have the spelling match the pronunciation in Turkish. But it is still hard for some people to call it that. Even for the Turks, many of whom called it Turkey for decades and then had to change in 2022. By now, most remember. If one slips up, no one comments. They are forgiving.
But until then, why did the place and the bird share the same name?
The land was called, “the land of the Turks” = Turkey. Pronounced, tur-key-YAY, but in English the Y at the end doesn’t have that “yay” sound. The land, whatever its name, has had humans living on, in, it for a long, wait, really long, time. More than 12,000 years. That’s considered a long time in human history. One of the many names was “Asia Minor,” or “Anatolia” which derives from the Greek term for where the “sun rises” or “levant” which means to “rise” or “sunrise” and before that, “the Land of the Hattians.” So, even over here in Adana, all roads lead to Rome. But more about that some other time.
So how did it become “Turkey?” For that we move forward to 1077 when the Seljuk Turks set up their nation and called it the “Sultanate of Rūm” referring to the area being considered “Eastern Rome” and today rūm refers to Orthodox Christians who were in this part of the world since Christianity arose. Keep in mind that St. Paul was born in Tarsus, less than an hour’s drive from Adana. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II declared himself, “Kayser-i-Rum” or “Caesar of the Romans” or Emperor. So all roads do lead to Rome… by the 12th century, Europeans, west of the Balkans, started using the term, “Turchia” which is what the modern Romans, Italians, call Türkiye. So even though the first of the Turkic groups to rule modern day Türkiye, called it something else, from this point on, the land started becoming more and more Turkish.
Chicken wing, chicken breast, and liver kebab.
Now, to the bird. By the way, as an aside, the way that the Turks give the bird is quite dramatic and done with flourish. More on that another time.
The bird, the Meleagris gallopavo, is indigenous to the Americas. When the Europeans encountered the bird, they called it guinea fowl or turkey cock/hen as they had seen pheasants and guinea fowl from Africa that looked similar. But, maybe not as big. In 1550, an Englishman William Strickland, who had introduced the bird to England (the first turkeys in Europe were taken to Spain by the Spanish from Mexico), was given a coat of arms which included the “turkey-cock in his pride proper.” Turkeys were introduced to North America by the English in the 17th century.
The bird was named after the country. Why? This article explains it well. Basically, when the birds were being traded for food, a confusion arose between the bird from the Americas with a bird from Africa…
But was it a fair trade? And should we re-name the bird? Call it the Mexican fowl? Or “huexolotl”? That’s the sixteenth-century Nahuatl, language of the central America, name. So for Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving or “Turkey-day”, they could say, “Happy Huexolotl!”
That said, here in Adana, they do not eat so much turkey. Mostly chicken.
Some people do load up their bikes when they shop.
Grocery shopping in Adana can be done at Groseri, a large chain. Easy to remember. Bu that is not the only place to shop. There are different levels of fanciness in grocery chains and the level of foreign food products also depends on how expensive and fancy the chain is… Here they are from highest in price to lowest.
Macrocenter and Kiosks is the fanciest and has the most Whole Foods or fancier vibe. There is one main store and lots of smaller kiosks. I find the kiosks are more like liquor stores with drunk food and drink. Owned by Migros.
Macrocenter has a Dean § DeLuca feel.
Metro is a Costco type store for restauranteurs. They have all that you need to open a sushi and maki place. Sushi is the rage in Turkiye. You have to sign up for a membership but it’s free and fairly easy to get the first time you go to the store. The store is a cavernous warehouse like most Costcos and you can buy glasses, furniture, etc. plus food.
Metro Center has a warehouse feel.
Groseri is probably my favorite chain. They have some interesting imported items, they make fresh food at the deli, and often there is a lady making fresh cig kofte which are vegetarian meat “balls”.
Carrefour is a French chain. The store in the M1 mall is huge while most of the neighborhood stores are average size. Imports from France include butter and other items that the Turks enjoy.
Migros is your average grocery store. They are a Swiss chain.
BIM is the largest retail grocery store chain in Turkiye. The stores are not always huge but they are like Aldi or Lidl in style. The middle aisle can have treasures or an air fryer.
BIM and most other places sell unmentionables.
A101 is a discount grocery store chain often found along with BIM in mixed income regions of town.
Migros Jet is also owned by Migros and is a discount chain.
Şok is also owned by Migros and is even more discount.
There are also open air markets and street vendors if you want to avoid grocery stores.
Every meal will end in tea, or “çay” (chai). It might even start with tea, if it’s breakfast, but it will always end with tea. Turkiye is the highest consumer of tea. It is customary to offer tea — always.
You can try to say no, but you will still get it. It’s like water in the United States. I have already grown accustomed to it. I still can’t hold the cup which is HOT. But, I do like the tea. I take it with one cube of sugar.
Tea is a serious shopping item.As is sugar…
There is an art to tea. I’ll write more about that later as I learn more. But what I have learned is not to drink it straight up. Dilute with the hot water which is always part of the tea setup. I didn’t know this and was drinking tea that was darker than American coffee…
If you wander around Adana (probably elsewhere as well), you’ll notice bags of bread hanging places at convenient height. These are for the taking by those who need food. After all, bread is life.
