Glorious Urfa A night bus brings us to Sanli Urfa, “Glorious Urfa”, city of Abraham, the prophet Job, holy fish and tumbling pigeons worth thousands of dollars. Halim, our guide, knows the best places to lunch. Gülizar Konukevi is a restaurant and hotel occupying an old Armenian house just a short way from the bazaar. A stone building surrounds a courtyard, with an Escher-like warren of steps leading up and down to different eating areas: to sofra-style eating in divan-furnished rooms, to tables on the terraces, or to a shaded eyvan (open-arched portico). We feast on lebeni corbasi, a thick, chilled soup of yoghurt, barley and chickpeas. This is followed by icli köfte, little torpedoes of minced lamb spiced with cinnamon, wrapped in a paste of bulgur and minced meat and fried. The main course is satir et, “cleavered meat”, a kind of lamb köfte burger, accompanied by various flat breads. Pudding is sillik, a syrupy pancake filled with crushed walnuts and pistachios. Altinsis (The Golden Skewer), is a great kebab shop on Urfa’s main drag. Here, for a mere £2.50, you will be served a glimmering chrome tray, eight inches by twelve, bearing a veritable arsenal of Urfa’s greatest weapons in the battle of the Eastern Turkish bulge. This is siverek kebabi. We take it as a fortress to be stormed but, as with Afyon’s Karahisar, we fail to take the citadel. Footsoldiers of heaped bunches of parsley, a bund of sliced raw onion sprinkled with sumac, and a minefield of bulgur, with explosively hot sivri peppers like green bazookas, lure us like cannon-fodder to within the outer defences. From here we are in range of a vast battery of patlican kebab, a steel skewer holding barrels of roasted aubergine separated by fat wads of mincemeat. Beyond lie the big guns, two solid grilled sis kofte, running from edge to edge of the platter. Plump tomatoes, overbrimming with buttery glazes, lie scattered across the field of battle like wounded redcoats crowded in shellholes. We dig in for a long campaign. But reinforcements appear, as plates of flat bread, bowls of lebeni and salad line up along the edge of the table. Like so many who have hungrily eyed the riches of the East, we are eventually forced into an ignoble retreat, and stagger away from the table, the walking wounded. Another evening in Urfa sees us at Sembol Ciger Salonu, a little further up Sarayonu Caddesi towards the famous Urfa bazaar. Their speciality is liver kebab. It is served with a mixed chopped salad, flat “wrap” bread, and parsley, mint and onions. With it comes a dish of shallots, skewered and grilled in their skins over charcoal: you squeeze it from one end and the skinned shallot pops out at the other. Very sweet but beware. The shallots of Urfa have a mind of their own, and with little encouragement they shoot, as did one of mine, across the salon floor or into your neighbour’s lap. The liver is sliced small, dusted with a mix of spices and grilled lightly. Quite perfect and only £1.50 with a glass of ayran (yoghurt drink). Dessert is a takeaway from Haci Baba opposite. Urfa kadayif is one of those unique, great tastes best had in its place of origin: totally fresh, crisp, finer-than-shredded-wheat pastry baked to a golden crust, spread with kaymak and ground pistachios served with a separate little plastic bag of sugar syrup, so one can control the sweetness to one’s (European) taste. A £1 portion is enough for two or three. | Mardin and the Fertile Crescent A nocturnal arrival in Mardin is improved by the kindly attentions of the tourist police. Apologising for their fearsome submachine guns, they carry our bags, fat with textile purchases, uphill to what appears to be the only hotel in the old city. Although the Erdoba Konak, a restored nineteenth-century stone merchant’s mansion, is expensive, it is low season and the friendly management are quite amenable to a little haggling. A “best price” is soon agreed by both parties. That settled, we are upgraded to the bridal suite, a complex of beautifully furnished rooms with a brass four-poster bed, a large ante-room with divans spread with thick Anatolian carpets, and a wide balcony looking south over the green plains of the Fertile Crescent. It is in a separate building, very private, and along with a single police guard we have it all to ourselves. Erdoba Konak’s restaurant is surprisingly good, and we dine for £5 a head on lentil soup, mixed mezes, an excellent pirzola (grilled lamb chops) and zerde, a rather special rice pudding flavoured with saffron and rosewater. In between visiting Syriac Orthodox monasteries, ancient mosques and coffee houses, strolling in orchards of almonds blossoming in spring sunshine, meeting goatherds and drinking milk fresh the teat, and watching sunrises and sunsets from our bridal balcony, we do manage to find time to eat, twice, at Mardin’s Kebapci Rido. Rődo’s kebab shop is one of those places which has made and maintained a reputation on a single dish like Iskender’s in Bursa, the original Sultanahmet Koftecisi in Istanbul, or the rice pudding shop at Hamsiköy. Or, in this case, two dishes, with a variation: sis kebab, or sis kofte, the latter in plain or spiced versions. Rődo’s is a simple place terrazzo floor, faux-marble plastic tabletops and the kitchen is right there as you enter: on your left, a wood-fired grill and oven, with meat-laden skewers smoking and sizzling; on your right, a refrigerated counter, behind which, at two huge butcher’s blocks, two generously built cooks have stripped a whole lamb carcass. Now each rolls briskly with an enormous blade up and down through a pile of white lamb fat and red flesh. There seems no need for a mincing machine here. Into the mix go red-pepper paste, ground chillis and parsley. It is then made up on skewers by the cook, who deftly moulds the mince on the kiliç, (sword) frequently dipping his hands into an ancient clay urn of water to stop the mixture sticking to his fingers. Then the ocakcibasi places it on the grill. Some meat is kept in small pieces for sis kebab. The meal is simple perfection. We try all the variations, with salad, tea and a large bowl of ayran each. For two: £6.50.
We return by air to Istanbul, and right into a further burst of Arctic weather. Back in the Grand Hotel de Londres, Frances takes to her bed and refuses to move. In the gloomy grandeur passée of our room, she looks for all the world like some White Russian princess in flight from the Bolsheviks, reviving only briefly when I bring a welcome takeaway of steaming et suyu (meat and vegetable broth) from nearby Haci Abdullah Lokanta. But there is something of the Antiocene now in her eyes. She gazes over to where the light is fading over the Golden Horn, and mumbles through her broth-soaked bread: “It will snow tomorrow, trust me...” | Gülizar Konukevi
Karameydani Camii Yani No:22
Sanliurfa
+90 414 215 05 05 Altinsis Et Lokantasi & Baklavalari
Sarayönü Caddesi Köprübasi
Sanmed Karsisi No:140
Sanliurfa
+90 414 215 46 46 Sembol Ciger Salonu
Sarayönü Caddesi No:16
Sanliurfa
+90 414 215 70 49 Haci Baba Dondurma ve Kadayif Salonu
Sarayönü Caddesi No:73
Sanliurfa
+90 414 215 20 41 Erdoba Konak
1.Caddesi No: 135
Mardin
+90 482 212 76 77 Kebabci Rido
1.Caddesi No:203
Mardin
+90 482 212 17 44 Haci Abdullah Lokanta
Sakizaga Cad.17,
Beyoglu, Istanbul
+90 212 293 8561 Christopher and Frances Ryan run the Damascus Drum, a Turkish style cafe and bookshop in Hawick in the Scottish Borders |
