ISTANBUL, Turkey. I snapped the photo at left in at the Ancient Orient Museum here – a handsome enclave of buildings hard by Topkapi Palace, but with many fewer visitors. This is hard to fathom since the Ottomans were robbing the Near East of its treasures long before the British or French got into…
All posts in October 2011
In Istanbul, supermarket wine really is super
ISTANBUL, Turkey. Some cities are wrapped in fog or smog; Istanbul is swaddled with antiquity and exoticism. No doubt when the emperor Constantine established this city as a purpose-built Imperial capital in the fourth century of the common era he did so with the idea that it would remain eternally youthful and relevant – such…
In Istanbul, not always room to sit
ISTANBUL, Turkey — As in any big city you can eat both high and low here, but the sheer number of restaurants per linear foot of sidewalk is unparalleled, at least in our experience. Many are tiny kebap and kofte (meatball) shops occupying six-or eight-foot-wide storefronts with no room to sit. One day, lost in…
Drink down, but smart
The tag at left is affixed to the capsule of the 2008 Renato Ratti Nebbiolo d’Alba, a wine I discuss in a column to appear in the Globe Food pages at the end of October. It’s a beauty, by the way. The theme of the column is how to use a simple technique well known…