Turkish Cuisine: A Complete Guide to Turkish Food & Drinks

Turkish cuisine sits among the world’s great food traditions, alongside French, Chinese, and Italian cooking. It grew out of the Byzantine and then Ottoman empires, and it still works as a mosaic: every region of Turkey eats differently, and Istanbul collects all of it. This guide covers how Turks structure their meals, the dishes worth knowing by name, street food, mezes, desserts, and what fills the glasses alongside.

First visit? Read the meals section below so the breakfast spread and the soup-first dinner make sense, then use our Istanbul food guide to plan where to eat it all. Returning visitors can head straight for the offal, meze, and drinks sections. Vegetarians have more room here than the kebab reputation suggests: breakfast is largely meat-free, olive oil vegetable dishes are an entire category, and the cig kofte sold on the street today is made without meat. If you want a shortlist instead of a syllabus, start with the best food in Istanbul.

Turkish food at a glance

Regional tastes drive the complexity of the country’s cuisine. The Eastern Black Sea gets too much rain for wheat, so its kitchens lean on corn and corn flour. Southeastern Anatolia, rich in livestock, became kebab country. The Aegean, covered in olive groves, is known for its olive oil vegetable dishes and herbs. Pastries are the monopoly of Thrace.

Istanbul has always pulled migrants from every part of Turkey, people moving in for work and bringing their kitchens with them. That migration made the city Turkey’s cultural heart, serving the most delicious Turkish foods of each region in one place. It is also why our Istanbul food tours can move through several regional kitchens without leaving the city.

Here is how the dishes in this guide sort by region and price level:

Dish or drink	Region or where to find it	What to order	Price level
Kebab	Southeastern Anatolia roots, grill houses everywhere	Skewered kebab grilled over coals	Mid-range
Olive oil vegetable dishes	Aegean coast	Stuffed bell peppers, artichokes in olive oil, served cold	Cheap eat
Fresh anchovies (hamsi)	Black Sea favorite, fish restaurants citywide	Corn flour crust, deep-fried	Cheap eat in season
Street food	Carts and stands across Istanbul	Simit with cheese and ayran, doner in a durum wrap	Cheap eat
Kokorec	Kadikoy, Ortakoy, and Balik Pazari stands	Grilled sheep intestines in bread	Cheap eat
Offal dishes	24-hour tripe restaurants	Iskembe soup with garlic and chili	Cheap eat
Meze	Taverns and fish restaurants	Haydari, lakerda, roasted eggplant salad, with raki	Mid-range
Baklava	Gaziantep and Urfa traditions, pastry shops everywhere	Fresh baklava, thin filo, ground nuts	Mid-range
Premium seafood	Fancy fish restaurants	Red mullet, turbot, bluefish, lobster	Special occasion

Meals and food customs in Turkey

The Ottoman Turks had two meals a day. The first, eaten between morning and noon, worked like brunch. The second came anytime between late afternoon and evening, built around meat dishes with vegetable and legume sides such as stuffed eggplant or bulgur pilaf with vegetables.

Most Turkish families now eat three meals a day. Weekday breakfasts are basic and quick. Weekend breakfasts, where the whole family gathers, are large and run to many different dishes.

Lunch stays simple: seasonal dishes, soup, salad. Dishes that take real time to prepare rarely appear at midday, and neither do meat-based mains or desserts. Dinner is the rich meal, because it is the one time family members who have been working in the fields or at a job all day sit down together.

There is also an unofficial fourth meal called yatsilik, eaten after dinner around 9 or 10 pm. Black Turkish tea is poured alongside seasonal fresh fruits, dried plums, figs, dried fruit pulps (grape, apricot, or mulberry), and nuts like pistachios, almonds, roasted chickpeas, roasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, walnuts, and hazelnuts.

Breakfasts in Turkish cuisine

Breakfast matters in many cultures, but in Turkey it runs closer to ceremony than routine. The weekday version is light, quick, and filling enough to carry you to lunch. It also happens to be one of the most vegetarian-friendly meals in the country, though there is plenty for meat eaters too.

A traditional spread covers the table in small dishes: cheese, olives, tomatoes, butter, jams and spreads, loaves of fresh bread, and an abundant flow of black tea. In rural areas, and for poorer households, breakfast is most commonly soup.

Cheese anchors the whole meal. The varieties shift by region: beyaz peynir (white cheese) everywhere, bergama tulum from the Aegean coast, deri tulum, otlu peynir from eastern Turkey, comlek peyniri from central Anatolia, and tel peynir and abaza peyniri from the Black Sea coast. Vegetables and potatoes get fried up in olive oil, hazelnut oil, or sunflower oil.

Eggs are a staple at most Turkish breakfasts: boiled, fried, or scrambled into menemen with peppers and tomatoes.

The traditional Turkish breakfast is a family affair, with every dish served at once and the meal stretching for hours of conversation. In recent years families have started taking the weekend version at restaurants, and a breakfast salon serves much the same spread you would get at home. No invitation to a homemade one? Read our post on the best breakfast restaurants in Istanbul.

Dinners in Turkish cuisine

A typical homemade dinner starts with a warm soup, then moves to a pot dish of vegetables (zucchini, eggplant, cauliflower, green beans, potatoes, spinach, to name a few), meat, or legumes (beans, chickpeas, lentils), served with something starchy: bread, Turkish rice pilaf, pasta, or bulgur. Green salad or cacik comes alongside as a refresher.

Homemade food in Turkish cuisine

Turks have long been home eaters; dining out is a habit modern life introduced. Before the 1980s, one income was the norm and someone was home cooking every day. As dual-income households spread and urban living standards rose, family meals around one table grew rarer, and eating out or ordering in took their place. Our Turkish recipes collection covers home versions of many dishes in this guide if you want to cook them yourself.

Key ingredients of Turkish cuisine

Vegetables: okra, pea, green peppers, tomato, mallow, artichoke, carrot, cucumber, chicory, spinach, zucchini, cauliflower, celery, asparagus, cabbage, mushrooms, parsley, lettuce, potatoes, beets, eggplant, leek, arugula, garlic, purslane, onion, radish

Legumes: broad beans, beans, chickpeas, lentils

Meats: lamb, beef, chicken, fish

Spices: rosemary, red pepper, nigella seeds, thyme, cumin, mint, cinnamon, coriander, turmeric, sumac, black pepper, clove, poppy seeds, saffron, sesame seeds

Nuts: pistachios, chestnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts

Grains: rice, bulgur

Oils: sunflower oil, olive oil, hazelnut oil

Fruits in Turkish cuisine

Turkey’s long sunny seasons keep fruit plentiful and cheap. Fresh or dried, the favorites are oranges, mandarins, plums, apricots, pomegranates, pears, apples, grapes, and figs. Fresh fruit usually closes out dinner as dessert, but some dishes cook with seasonal fruit directly.

That sweet and salty pairing, usually built on sour fruits like plum and quince, traces back to the Ottoman era. The best-known fruity dishes:

Ayva Dolması: Stuffed quince, filled the same way as a dolma.

Çağla Aşı: A celebration dish of lamb, unripe fresh almond fruit (the fruit, not the seeds), yogurt, and garlic.

Yeni Dünya Kebabı: Loquat fruits stuffed with lamb.

Bread in Turkish cuisine

Bread is the one item no Turkish meal goes without, and that has held for thousands of years. It lands on the table whether the dish calls for it or not.

Turkey has the highest bread consumption per person in the world: 199.6 kg (440 lb) a year, which works out to more than three times a person’s own body weight annually.

The most common breads:

Bazlama Ekmek: A leavened bread with a circular, regular shape.

Yufka Ekmek: Phyllo bread, eaten in Anatolia for more than a thousand years, made from wheat flour, water, and salt. Dried, it keeps 6 to 12 months. Fresh yufka is the base for pancakes and börek.

Misir Ekmegi: Corn bread, high in nutrients, found in the Eastern Black Sea region.

Pide: Flat bread, common across Turkish and Middle Eastern cuisines.

Lavas: Made of water, flour, and salt. Thicker than yufka, thinner than pide, and the bread of choice for wraps.

Somun Ekmek: The everyday loaf, fluffy with a golden color, found almost anywhere and a staple for centuries.

Traditional Turkish dishes and food

Turkish cuisine covers cereals, pastries, vegetables, and wild-grown herbs cooked with meat, plus a deep bench of soups. Butter, sunflower oil, and olive oil do the heavy lifting in the pot. The kitchen also has its own healthy staples: grape molasses, yogurt, bulgur.

Soups in Turkish cuisine

Few countries serve soup at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Turkey does, and you would need more than 200 bowls to taste every kind. A Turkish meal usually opens with a çorba, most often built on lentils, yogurt, chicken, or wheat.

Some of the most popular:

Cold Ayranaşı Soup (Soğuk Ayranaşı Çorbası)

Tripe Soup (İşkembe Çorbası)

Tomato Soup (Domates Çorbası)

Chicken and Vermicelli Soup (Şehriyeli Tavuklu Çorbası)

Tarhana Soup (Tarhana Çorbası)

Lentil Soup (Mercimek Çorbası)

Cheek and Shank Soup (Kellepaca Çorbası)

Rice, grain, and pilafs in Turkish cuisine

Rice runs through the cuisine, stuffed into meat and vegetable dishes and standing alone as pilaf, and Turks hold its preparation to high standards. A great pilav is proof of a home cook’s skill.

Most pilafs are cooked plain with butter, but there are richer ones flavored with spice, nuts, and fruit, and others made with meat, fish, and vegetables, known as sultan pilavı. Pilaf usually rides alongside a meat or fish main, though heartier versions like yufkalı pilav and safranlı midyeli pilav need only a salad to make a full meal. İç pilavı, with currants, pine nuts, and calves’ liver, is served all over Turkey on special occasions. Acılı bulgur pilavı swaps in cracked wheat for a nutty flavor, and rice with chickpeas is a popular, nutritious standby. In summer, some pilafs are served cold with plain yogurt.

Pilaf is as much an art in Turkey today as it was in the sultan’s kitchen.

Vegetable dishes in Turkish Cuisine

Turkey is no stranger to vegetable-based cooking. The cuisine leans on vegetables and wild-grown greens, cooked meatless or with a little meat to stretch supplies of beans and rice.

The Aegean and Mediterranean regions grow vegetables year-round in their warm climates: zucchini, eggplant, cauliflower, bell peppers, green beans, spinach, artichokes, carrots, celery.

Fresh vegetables get cooked many ways, but most dishes fall into a few camps: meatless vegetable dishes (including the olive oil ones), boiled, fried, and roasted. Fried vegetables usually arrive with garlic yogurt sauce.

A typical vegetable dish starts with a base of olive oil, chopped onions, pepper paste or tomato paste, and fresh tomatoes, then the vegetables and hot water go in to simmer as a pot dish. Minced meat can join most of them, except the olive oil dishes, which are eaten cold and stay meatless.

Further reading: Olive oil and olive oil dishes in Turkish cuisine.

Pickles are another favorite way to eat vegetables, made from nearly everything, carrots and cucumbers included.

The most popular vegetable dishes:

Karniyarik: Large eggplant stuffed with ground beef, chopped onions, garlic, tomatoes, and green peppers, baked in the oven.

Kizartma: Deep-fried vegetables (usually eggplant, zucchini, potatoes, green peppers) with yogurt sauce.

Mücver: Grated vegetable (zucchini above all) mixed with egg and flour, then deep-fried.

Lahana sarmasi: Rolled white cabbage stuffed with onions and rice, with minced beef if you want meat.

Kapuska: Thin-sliced white cabbage cooked with onions and tomato sauce, sometimes with minced beef or lamb.

Ispanak yemegi: Onions, spinach, and rice cooked in tomato paste, usually eaten with garlic yogurt.

Türlü: Eggplant, zucchini, potatoes, tomatoes, and onion in one pot.

Zeytinyağlı biber dolması: Stuffed bell peppers.

Kabak oturtma: Zucchini roasted with beef or lamb mince.

Meat dishes in Turkish cuisine

From chicken to beef and lamb, this is a carnivore’s territory. The methods vary as much as the meats: roasts in spiced sauces, stews with vegetables, skewered kebabs grilled over slow-burning coals, and kofte in every form. Almost every city in Turkey has its own style of kofte and kebab built on spiced chicken, lamb, or beef.

Cooking lamb with bulgur and legumes is another common route to a main meal. When lentils, beans, or chickpeas carry the dish, a small amount of meat goes in just for flavor; the dish is already nutritious and quick.

Lamb ruled Ottoman cuisine, with beef reserved for sausages and dried meat (pastirma). Today lamb, beef, and chicken all appear in abundance, and chicken has become the most-eaten meat thanks to its low price next to red meat. In 2020, Turkey consumed more chicken than beef and lamb combined.

Kebabs in Turkish cuisine

Kebab gets cooked at home as well as in restaurants. Home cooks favor pot kebabs, prepared dry without water, because they are easier. Skewered kebabs over an open flame belong to restaurants and to the family picnic, where a mangal (barbecue) stands ready with charcoal. Kofte of ground beef or lamb, grilled meats, skewered meats, and grilled tomato, peppers, and eggplant round out the picnic spread.

Further reading: 20 Best & Most Famous Turkish Kebabs (w/ Authentic Recipes)

Fish and seafood in Turkish cuisine

Fresh fish is everywhere in Turkey, and a specialty of the coasts, where locals will tell you when and where the catch came in. High prices keep fish an occasional dish next to red meat; the average Turk eats four times less of it than a European counterpart.

Fish gets grilled, fried, or slow-poached by the buğulama method, but some of the best dishes are the simplest, like fresh anchovies coated in corn flour and deep-fried.

Other reasonably priced and popular fish include bonito, farmed sea bass, mackerel, sardines, and farmed sea bream.

Red mullet, ocean salmon, swordfish, turbot, and bluefish sit at the other end: delicious, expensive, more treat than habit.

Bugs, clams, crabs, oysters, lobsters, octopuses, and scallops almost never appear in home kitchens; look for them on the menus of fancy restaurants. Shrimp, squid, and calamari turn up more often, mostly as appetizers at fish restaurants. Mussels are the exception: deep-fried or stuffed with rice, they rank among the country’s best-loved street foods.

Entrail dishes (offal) in Turkish cuisine

Offal carries real weight in Turkish cuisine, mostly because entrails cost less and pack more nutrition than other cuts. Markets run about one entrails seller to every three butchers, and some regular butchers sell entrails too.

Most offal dishes are grilled and flavored with thyme. The roster is long: fried brains, brain salad (a kind of meze), grilled liver slices, fried livers (Arnavut cigeri, a favorite meze), liver stew with thyme, tripe soup (iskembe corbasi), tripe with chickpeas, tripe au gratin, grilled spleen (long used as a treatment for anemia), grilled kidneys, grilled ram testicles, grilled sheep intestines (kokorec), sheep head (kelle), and trotter soups.

Tripe restaurants, fondly called the last stop of drunks, stay open 24 hours a day. The dishes come with bread and plenty of chili and garlic, and they make a hearty meal.

Related: 11 Foods to Challenge Your Eyes & Tastebuds: Offal Dishes in Turkey

Turkish street food

Away from home, Turks want food that fills you up and cooks fast. The favorites below have earned their place.

Further reading: 20 Best Street Food in Turkey

Doner

An old Turkish favorite that conquered much of the West. A compressed lamb and beef cone grills slowly on a vertical rotisserie beside an open flame, carved down in thin slices with a very long knife. The meat goes onto bread or into a lavas wrap (durum) with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, yogurt, and potatoes as you like.

Further reading: Best doner kebab restaurants in Istanbul.

Gozleme

The Turkish pancake. A sheet of dough thin as a crepe bakes on a curved sheet of metal, then gets filled with cheese, potato, spinach, or ground meat, always served fresh. Simple food, yet plenty of small eating spots list it as their specialty.

Pide

Often called Turkish pizza: thick dough topped with meats, vegetables, and cheeses, baked to order in a wood-fired oven. Pide comes out long and oval, cut into many slices.

Lahmacun

Another Turkish answer to pizza, this one a thin pastry spread with minced meat, tomato, onion, salt, and parsley, spiced with red pepper to taste. The standard move: pile the center with tomatoes, lettuce, and onions, add a squeeze of lemon, and roll it up.

Further reading: The Best Lahmacun in Istanbul: 6 Outstanding Lahmacun Places

Simit

A ring of bread covered in sesame seeds, and one of the simple pleasures of Turkish life. Simit is everywhere: small covered carts, little stands, sometimes a walking vendor balancing a tower of them on his head. It looks like a plain roll but works as breakfast or street snack, best with some cheese and ayran.

Kokorec

Sheep intestines flavored with herbs and served in bread with tomatoes, onions, and parsley. It sounds like a dare and eats like a favorite. The best kokorec is in the Kadikoy, Ortakoy, and Balik Pazari districts of Istanbul; for more eating district by district, see our neighborhood food guides.

Kumpir

A large baked potato cut open and loaded with your pick of fillings: cheese, olives, salads, pickles, peas, mushrooms, sausages, corn.

Kofte ekmek

Bread filled with kofte (meatballs), onion, hot spices, tomato, salad, and parsley, usually sold from minivans. One of the best street foods you will find.

Cig kofte

The name means raw meatballs, but the common version today contains no meat at all: raw bulgur “cooked” in spices, wrapped in a lettuce leaf with a sprinkle of fresh lemon juice. Simple, healthy, and eaten on streets all over Istanbul.

Meze and salads in Turkish cuisine

Fresh salads accompany most Turkish meals, served right beside the main course. Most are simple: leafy greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, onions, and whatever else is in season. Salads of beans, grains, and vegetables show up in winter mezes, and edible wild greens like dandelions get cooked and served cold with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil or lemon juice.

Further reading: Olive oil in Turkish cuisine.

Meze culture lives in Turkish taverns and restaurants. Hot and cold mezes arrive at the table in small plates and everyone shares. Any drink works, though Turkish wines and Turkish raki pair best.

The best examples: wild herbs with yogurt sauce, pickles, ezine cheese, melon, vegetable dishes with olive oil, stuffed grape leaves, haydari, lakerda, arugula salad, tomato and onion salad, roasted eggplant salad, marinated fish, octopus salad, shrimp cuts, sautéed wild herbs, pilaki, fava, şakşuka, celery salad, artichokes with olive oil, and ezme salad.

Turks order mezes with care for the balance of acid, fat, and salt across the table. Several of the above are dipping mezes, served with toasted bread.

Turkish desserts

Baklava and kadayif, the sweet, nutty, flaky pastries, are the Turkish desserts the world knows best. The most famous baklava types come from the southeastern cities of Gaziantep and Urfa, where bakers roll the thinnest possible sheets of fresh filo and select and grind the nuts with painstaking care. Until the 1990s, baklava was a celebration dessert, served only during the religious holidays of Ramadan and the Sacrifice feast.

Some dishes work both shifts: katmer can open the day as breakfast or close it as dessert.

Milky puddings finish many Turkish meals, and shops across the country display them decorated with fruit and crushed nuts like ground pistachios. The puddings get infused with rose water, vanilla, or mastic, a fragrant pine resin. Home cooks make milky desserts more than syrupy ones because they are easier.

With fruit growing through the long sunny months, figs, melons, sultana grapes, and citrus have been part of the cuisine since antiquity. Spiced fruit compotes typically end a large meal, and many homes keep large jars of preserved fruit in the larder.

Asure holds the record for variety, pulling in nearly every grain, nut, and fruit grown in Turkey.

The three main types of Turkish desserts:

Syrupy desserts: Dough-based sweets finished with sugar syrup. Baklava, tulumba, kadayif, sekerpare, lokum (Turkish delight), revani, irmik tatlisi, tas kadayif, lokma, and burma are the popular ones.

Related: Baklava Types: 14 Best & Different Kinds of Turkish Baklava (Traditional & Exotic)

Milky desserts: Lighter than the syrupy kind, easy to eat and easy to digest. Keskul, sakizli muhallebi, sutlac, tavukgogsu, kazandibi, dondurma (Turkish ice cream), and gullac lead the list.

Fruit desserts: Hosaf, komposto, kabak tatlisi, ayva tatlisi, and pestil are the popular fruit-based sweets.

Turkish beverages

Visitors often assume a majority-Muslim country would keep alcohol scarce. In practice it is about as available in Turkey as anywhere in Europe. Raki and beer account for most of the country’s alcohol consumption, and Turkish winemaking, spread across a number of regions, goes back thousands of years.

On the non-alcoholic side, two drinks dominate: black tea and Turkish coffee. Herbal teas earn their place on cold winter days; mint, sage, ginger, thyme, chamomile, and rosehip are the popular ones.

Turkish tea

Most Turks drink many cups a day, and tea is always offered first to any visitor, in homes and businesses alike. It brews in a teapot, never tea bags, preferably porcelain, set over a kettle, and a properly brewed glass comes out deep red. Hotels and cafes may serve it in porcelain cups, but Turks want theirs in glass. Instant coffee (which Turks call Nescafe, whatever the brand) is common enough, yet nothing displaces a good cup of tea.

Tea gardens (cay bahcesi) abound in Istanbul, open-air and often set up where the panoramic views are. They pour fruit juice and colas too, and serve sandwiches and tost (grilled sandwiches). The more traditional gardens brew with a semaver (a metal teapot), and some offer nargile (water pipe) with an array of fruit-flavored tobacco. The tea gardens of Moda and Emirgan are favorites among cafe-goers.

Turkish coffee

Turkish coffee arrives in small porcelain cups, espresso-sized, always with a glass of water. It is traditionally prepared in a small copper pot called a cezve, made by boiling extremely finely ground coffee with water and sugar, and served to your taste: sade (no sugar) or sekerli (sweet).

Afterward, you can perhaps find someone to read your future from the coffee grounds, a practice still popular in Turkey among old and young alike.

Ayran

Yogurt diluted with water, salted, served cold. It accompanies most meals well, and kebab or spicy food best of all.

Sahlep

A hot winter drink made from the dried, powdered roots of a mountain orchid, mixed with milk and sugar and boiled. The starch-rich roots thicken it naturally into something close to cream. It usually comes plain with a sprinkle of cinnamon, though in winter you can find it standing in for milk in lattes and other coffees.

Turnip juice

A sour, sometimes hot, crimson drink made by boiling turnips and carrots in water with vinegar. Born in southern Anatolia, it settles an upset stomach, helps the body handle heat, and stands up to spicy food like kebab, cig kofte, and raki.

Boza

Thick and slightly sour, made from crushed millet and water left to ferment. Boza belongs to winter, and boza houses serve it in glasses decorated with cinnamon or chickpeas.

Raki

Probably the most famous of Turkey’s alcoholic drinks, and certainly the favorite at a table of food. The aniseed flavor carries a high alcohol content, so nobody drinks it fast. Most people mix the colorless raki with water, which turns it cloudy white. It is widely said to aid digestion and works as a kind of aperitif.

Further reading: Turkish Raki: Complete Guide for Beginners

Words to know at the Turkish table

Before eating, the chef and everyone at the table wish each other “afiyet olsun,” the Turkish bon appétit.

To compliment the chef, diners say “elinize saglik,” literally “health to your hands,” understood as “very delicious, well done.”

And before drinking, everyone calls out “serefe”: cheers.

Go deeper into Turkish food

This guide is the map; the dish guides are the territory. The most delicious Turkish foods ranks the plates themselves, and Turkish kebabs walks through 20 styles with their recipes. Sweet tooth first? Go straight to Turkish desserts. The shared table lives in Turkish mezes, everything in a glass is covered in Turkish drinks, and the meals you eat standing up fill our street food guide.