Istanbul Evening Food Tour with Ferry to Kadikoy

Karaköy pier and the ferry to Kadıköy

The evening begins at the Karaköy city-ferry pier, on the waterfront just below the Galata Bridge and two minutes from the Karaköy stop of the T1 tram. The white-and-green ferries that leave from here are the ordinary public boats Istanbul residents use to commute between the European and Asian sides, and your guide buys the crossing for the group. The 30-minute ride to Kadıköy at around 18:00 is one of the best views in the city: the domes and minarets of Topkapı Palace, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque in the evening light behind you, the Maiden's Tower and the lights of Üsküdar ahead, and the tulip-glass tea sellers walking the decks.

Our Istanbul team sees this crossing as the first course of the tour: the guide uses it to explain how the city eats differently on each shore and what you are about to taste in Kadıköy, the food capital of the Asian side.

Kadıköy Çarşı: market streets and fish market

Kadıköy Çarşı is the dense grid of market streets behind the ferry port, where Asian-side residents have shopped for a century: greengrocers piled with seasonal produce, pickle shops with barrels of fermented vegetables, spice and dried-fruit sellers, bakeries, cheese and olive counters and the fish market with its catch of the day laid out on ice. Your guide spends about an hour walking you through it, tasting as you go, and this is where the street-food stops are concentrated. The signature bite is midye dolma, mussels stuffed with spiced rice and eaten with a squeeze of lemon from the fish-market stalls, alongside other snacks the guide chooses according to the season.

The market is the heart of any Kadıköy food tour, and it is also where you learn to read a Turkish neighbourhood: what the locals buy, which stalls have the queues and how a kokoreç or simit stand works.

A family-style meal from southeast Turkey

Dinner proper is at a restaurant in the Kadıköy streets that specialises in the cooking of southeast Turkey, the region around Diyarbakır and Mardin whose Kurdish-influenced kitchen is known for lamb, bulgur, lentils, walnuts, pomegranate and generous use of spice. The meal is served as it would be in a family house there: a spread of starters followed by a main course, with bread and the regional drinks, taking about an hour at the table. All food on the tour is halal, as everywhere in Istanbul, and the restaurant has vegetarian and gluten-free alternatives if you tell us at booking.

Our guides choose this stop because it shows a side of Turkish food that visitors rarely find in Sultanahmet, and because the owners explain the dishes themselves; it is the longest and most relaxed stop of the evening and the one most guests remember.

Tea and coffee by Kadıköy Square

After dinner the group walks to a traditional café near Kadıköy Square, the kind of place where neighbourhood men spend their evenings over backgammon boards and endless glasses of tea. Here the guide orders the two drinks that define Turkish café life: black tea brewed in a double teapot and served in a small tulip-shaped glass, and Turkish coffee cooked slowly in a long-handled pot and served with its grounds settled at the bottom, with a glass of water. You spend about half an hour here learning how to order, how much sugar to ask for and how the coffee cup is turned over for fortune reading at the end.

This stop is the pause of the evening, a chance to sit down after two hours on your feet in the market and to ask the guide about everyday life on the Asian side before the ferry back.

The ferry back and dessert in Karaköy

The return crossing to Karaköy takes about twenty minutes and is the mirror image of the first: Istanbul fully lit at night, the Galata Tower on the hill ahead and the bridges strung with lights, so keep your camera ready on the open deck. Back on the European side the final stop is a local sweet shop near the pier for a Turkish dessert, which may be baklava, a milk pudding such as sütlaç or kazandibi, or a seasonal sweet, served with tea; this is the last of the eight food stops and of the four drinks included. The tour ends at Karaköy pier at about 22:00, next to the tram stop and a short walk from the Galata Bridge, Galata Tower and the Tünel funicular up to Istiklal Street.

If you are staying in Sultanahmet, the T1 tram runs late from Karaköy; for Taksim take the funicular from Karaköy to Tünel and walk or ride the historic tram along Istiklal.