I'm Korhan Karakoyun, co-founder of Yummy Istanbul and the author of the food and travel guides published on this website.
I studied Tour Guiding at Erciyes University and graduated in 2006. I hold a nationwide professional tourist-guide license in Türkiye and work professionally in both Turkish and English.
My career in professional guiding began in 2006 and now spans two decades. During that time, I have led thousands of tours and guided tens of thousands of guests. My work and personal travels have taken me through almost every province of Türkiye.
My professional background extends beyond food. As a cultural guide, I studied and interpreted Turkish history, archaeology, mythology and art history. Over time, however, food became the subject that interested me most because it connects all these subjects to ordinary life.
Food was also part of my education long before it became my profession. I grew up living in different regions of Türkiye, where local food traditions were simply part of everyday life.
I remember neighbors making mulberry pestil in Gümüşhane. Pestil is a traditional sun-dried fruit leather made with walnuts. In the mountains of Kıbrıscık, I collected and ate the wild bulbs we called çiğdem yumruları with friends. We knew them as a local edible crocus, although similar-looking wild bulbs can be highly poisonous and should never be eaten without expert identification.
In Saray, Van, I remember having my pockets filled with kavurga, an ancient preparation of roasted grains with roots stretching back around 9,000 years. In Aydın, I spent time around the fig and olive harvests. During summer visits to my family's village in Cappadocia, families would cook, dry and stack hundreds of sheets of yufka for winter.
I did not think of these as important culinary experiences at the time. Looking back, they gave me an early understanding of how closely food in Türkiye is connected to geography, seasons, family and community. Today, I find these traditions, ancient recipes and the people who have carried this culture forward every bit as fascinating as the Blue Mosque or Ephesus, if not more so.
My principal areas of knowledge today are Turkish culinary culture, Istanbul food, Anatolian cuisine, regional specialties and traditional village food. Fifteen years of guiding throughout Türkiye allowed me to taste regional dishes where they originated and learn how ingredients, recipes and traditions change across the country.
In 2013, I co-founded Yummy Istanbul with my wife Leisa. For approximately five years, I personally led our Istanbul food tours, taking guests through markets, neighborhood restaurants, street-food stalls and family-run businesses.
Today, I run Yummy Istanbul and remain closely involved in every part of the company. I design our tours, select the restaurants and dishes we feature, establish our guiding standards, oversee quality control, communicate with guests and direct the editorial work published on our website. If you email Yummy Istanbul, there is a good chance I am one of the people behind the reply.
I am also an enthusiastic home cook, although I do not claim to be a professional chef. I cook the hearty Turkish food I grew up eating, particularly traditional tencere yemekleri such as kıymalı ıspanak (spinach slowly cooked with minced meat, onion and rice) and çoban kavurma (small pieces of meat sautéed with peppers, tomato and onion). Seeing my 12-year-old daughter and my wife savor these dishes is the real joy of cooking them. I am especially at home around a charcoal mangal, cooking şiş kebap, köfte and the kind of food that brings everyone together around the table.
My curiosity is not limited to traditional Turkish cooking. I travel extensively around Türkiye and internationally for food, visiting everything from experimental and fine-dining restaurants to tiny establishments that have spent generations perfecting one dish. I have yet to encounter a food I am unwilling to try.
I should also admit that I am biased toward Turkish food. If you asked me which I would prefer to eat for the next whole month, traditional Turkish food or modern fine dining, I would choose Turkish food without hesitation. I admire Michelin-starred restaurants such as the famous Basque Akelarre, where I have eaten, but a perfectly cooked Turkish home meal, the kind a grandmother might make, would still be my choice.
I write the food and travel articles published under my name on Yummy Istanbul. They draw on my childhood, university education, professional guiding career, years spent personally leading food tours and the continuing research that comes from traveling, cooking and eating.
In 2015, I was featured in Al Jazeera's AJ Eats episode, "Istanbul: Turkish Cuisine at a Crossroads," discussing traditional Turkish cuisine and introducing foods prepared using longstanding local methods.
My purpose is not simply to tell readers what to order. I want to explain where a dish comes from, how it changes between regions, what distinguishes a good version and why it matters to the people who make and eat it.