What do people eat in Turkey?
In Turkey the day starts with tea and bread, lunch is soup and home cooking, and dinner is the big family meal. Black tea in small glasses goes with all of it.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Breakfast is called kahvaltı, which means before coffee. On weekdays it is often just a simit, a sesame bread ring of about 320 kcal, with a glass of tea. At weekends it is a long late morning spread: white cheese, olives, tomato, cucumber, honey with kaymak cream, and menemen, eggs cooked with tomato and pepper.
Lunch
Many workers eat at an esnaf lokantası, a simple restaurant with home cooked dishes in trays at the counter. A typical lunch is mercimek çorbası, red lentil soup of about 250 kcal a bowl, then kuru fasulye (white beans in tomato sauce) with rice. Pide and lahmacun are quick lunches too.
Dinner
Dinner is the main family meal, eaten in the evening when everyone is home. It often starts with soup, then a meat or vegetable dish cooked in olive oil or tomato, with rice or bulgur pilav, salad, yoghurt and plenty of bread. Grilled kebabs are more for eating out.
Starters
Meze is a set of small cold dishes shared at the table, especially at a meyhane with rakı. Think haydari (thick yoghurt with garlic and herbs), spicy ezme salad, sarma (vine leaves rolled around rice), white cheese with melon, and fried calamari or mussels in Istanbul.
Desserts
Baklava is filo with pistachios or walnuts soaked in syrup, and Gaziantep is famous for it. Four small pieces are about 430 kcal. Künefe is shredded pastry with melted cheese in syrup, served hot. Lighter options are sütlaç rice pudding and lokum, Turkish delight, which often comes with coffee.
Drinks
Black tea, çay, is drunk all day from small tulip shaped glasses, and Turkey drinks more tea per person than any other country, over 3 kg a year. Turkish coffee is strong and unfiltered, usually after a meal. Ayran, salted yoghurt with water, goes with kebab, and rakı, an anise spirit, with meze.
Street food
Simit carts are on many corners in the morning. Döner is the classic quick meal, about 700 kcal in bread, and lahmacun, a thin flatbread with spiced mince, is rolled up with parsley, onion and lemon. In Istanbul people eat balık ekmek, grilled fish in bread, by the water, and kokoreç late at night.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
Tea is offered almost everywhere, even while you shop for a carpet, and saying no to a glass can feel rude. Rakı is called lion's milk, aslan sütü, because it turns white with water. After Turkish coffee some people turn the cup upside down and read the future in the grounds.