About Yummy Istanbul

Istanbul, the way locals eat it.

Small-group food tours led by guides who live and eat in these neighborhoods. We've been doing this since 2013, on both sides of the Bosphorus.

A Yummy Istanbul guide and guests among colorful spice mounds in the Istanbul Spice Market

We'd rather show you the food than the museums

For us, introducing the thousand-year-old flavors of Anatolian cooking means more than another monument. Istanbul has plenty of those, and they are worth your time. But the city you remember is the one you taste: the breakfast that fills the whole table, the döner cut to order off a wood fire, the mussels squeezed with lemon on a Kadıköy corner.

So that is what we do. We walk you into the markets, family kitchens and backstreets where Istanbulites actually eat, order the things worth ordering, and tell you why they matter. No tourist traps, no rushing, no script.

A Yummy Istanbul guide explaining Turkish ingredients inside the Spice Bazaar in Istanbul
  • 13Years of Istanbul food tours
  • 4.95from 7,800+ reviews
  • 10guests max per tour
  • Top 10food experiences in Europe

Reviewed across Tripadvisor, Viator, GetYourGuide, Google and Airbnb.

What makes a Yummy Istanbul tour different

Real local guides

Our guides live in Istanbul and eat where they take you. You get a local who knows the vendors by name. Every one is a licensed, professional Istanbul guide.

Small groups, max 10

Public tours run with ten guests at most. Small enough to share a plate and a conversation, and to fit around a table in a tiny family kitchen.

Where locals actually eat

Market stalls, backstreets and old family lokantas you would walk past without a local, plus the icons done right. We get you in, order the things worth ordering, and tell you why they matter.

The most popular in Istanbul

Of every food tour in Istanbul, the Istanbul Taste of Two Continents Food Tour: Spice Market & Ferry has more reviews online than any other.

A Yummy Istanbul guide laughing with guests at a historic han entrance in Istanbul

The people who'll show you around

Yummy Istanbul started in 2013 and grew out of one simple belief: the best way to understand this city is to eat it. Today a small team of Istanbul locals runs the tours.

Your guide is one of these food-obsessed Istanbulites. Whoever you get, you are spending the day with someone who genuinely loves this food.

We have not always been Yummy Istanbul. We started as Istanbul on Food, and changed our name, logo and website along the way. Everything that matters stayed the same: the same small-group tours, the same local guides, and the same mission. If you knew us as Istanbul on Food, you are in exactly the same hands.

Eat Yummy, Be Happy is our motto, and it is printed on the back of every guide's t-shirt. It is the short version of the whole idea.

Come eat with us

Spend a day crossing two continents, one plate at a time, with a local who knows exactly where to go.