Izmir Culinary Tour from Izmir

Tour Info:

Tour Days: All year round
Duration: Full day
Status: In Private basis only
Pick up time: To be confirmed

Highlights:

• Izmir Culinary Tour

Itinerary:

On this food tour, we’ll explore the tangled roots of Izmir’s cuisine and culture, enjoying the friendly laid back environment of the markets near the agora and sampling a variety of dishes unique to this city.

To be from Izmir is to know good food and take the time to enjoy it. Exploring the markets, bakeries, homestyle restaurants (Lokanta), and tea gardens of the narrow streets that spread out below the ancient Roman-built agora, we are always struck by how local – so “Izmirli,” as the Turks say – the cuisine here is. Digging a little deeper, a wide range of Mediterranean influences reveal themselves in this city’s kitchen, reflective of its rich history.

In this sun-kissed Aegean port city, peoples have come and gone for millennia – Greeks, Cretan Turks, Sephardic Jews, Armenians, Levantine Europeans, and Kurds, to name a few – each contributing to the culture of the place, but also, we sense, surrendering to a lifestyle distinctive to the city.

On this walk, we’ll explore the tangled roots of Izmir’s cuisine and culture, enjoying the friendly laid-back environment of the markets near the agora and sampling a variety of dishes unique to this city.

The day will begin with a breakfast of boyoz, a Sephardic savory pastry found only here, slow-cooked eggs, and local tulum cheese followed by a slice of history from a 3rd generation helva maker.

We’ll visit a workshop where lokma, a donut-like sweet traditionally served to lighten the mood at funerals, is made and explore the crumbling architectural beauty of old Izmir, stopping by a spice vendor whose wife prepares another local specialty with Sephardic roots called subye, a refreshing drink made from ground melon seeds.

We’ll explore a residential neighborhood inhabited by migrant families from the East of Turkey before eating our way through another market filled with local culinary institutions including a fine fish restaurant, a Bosnian–Turkish gastro-café, a pide bakery and one of the best lokantas in the country.

Izmir takes its offal seriously, so we’ll give its famous sogus, poached sheep’s head, a try before finishing the day with a local traditional semolina dessert called sambali and a cup of Turkish coffee made from beans freshly ground the old-fashioned way, in a stone mortar.

It’s an “Only in Izmir” kind of day.

End of the tour we will transfer you to your Izmir Hotel.