Tara Framer Remembers Turkish Sites and Flavors

Janine Aloisi: Our Guest of the Week is Tara Framer who’s a Creative Director in Marketing. Tara decided to celebrate her 50th birthday in Turkey because it was such a monumental birthday she thought that Turkey was ideal because of its cultural cities and amazing cuisine. Let’s go into the interview.

Tara Framer: I recently celebrated my 50th birthday and as a gift to myself I took a big trip to Turkey. I started in Istanbul, I stayed in Beyoglu. So I was eating out in restaurants in Tünel and in the area around Cicek Passage I don’t—my Turkish is not very good I’m sorry. And I found the restaurants in the restaurant tour it’s very friendly because they would see me each day I was in that area for the first four days. I love Turkish breakfast, I don’t know it’s so simple but it’s different than what I’m used to. It just starts with hard boiled egg and a little bit of cheese maybe some Feta cheese which a specific kind of Turkish Feta which is not as salty as the GreekFeta in my estimation also olives, tomatoes and cucumbers and some bread. And it’s so simple and tea of course everywhere you go you drink tea. But this breakfast was so simple and felt so healthy and light. It. was a perfect way to start the day and I’ve continued—I’ve been back from Turkey now almost two months, months and a half and I thought I would have the Turkish breakfast everyday since then.

Well, there are so many different dishes that I tried in Turkey and I would still like to try that I didn’t get a chance to try. One thing everybody talks about is Kebab because wherever you go there’s a variety of Kebab. The food feels to me very fresh and I happened to love rice, I like rice more than bread so where will you go there’s a great deal of—and I like that. I like many of the small dishes their yoghurt dishes, yoghurt with cucumber, yoghurt with spices, yoghurt with spinach. I also had grilled eggplant, I also had I think fava beans once or twice. I had sardines, I really enjoyed a few things in particular—am I saying that correctly? And manti. I really like manti. I tried to make some lentil soup but it came out very blend so I don’t think I have the right spices and I only pulled recipe down from the internet. I was very impressed with the ancient architecture, the old buildings all around Istanbul and although the buildings are very old Istanbul is a very clean city people take great pride in their city .and also was very easy to get around and also I want to mention for those Americans who want to go there it’s very safe. I found it very friendly place. I wish I knew a little bit more Turkish but it was also very friendly to Americans who don’t know Turkish. What were really wonderful was just the many different cultures coming together over many, many centuries gave it this very unusual and exotic flavor that is incomparable to any place I also traveled.