Tomatoes and Granny Panties: Shopping in Istanbul’s Markets
Our very first post on the road, which now seems like very long ago, was about how much we enjoy going to local markets, how it gives us an instant feel for a place. And Istanbul is a great town for markets. I’m not talking about the two markets in every guidebook — the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Market. While both are worth an afternoon, we think you can probably find better, less expensive versions of pretty much anything elsewhere in the city.
I’m talking about the local markets. The ones set up in mosque courtyards and down side streets, the empty parking lots where old farmers back up their trucks and string up tarps. There are several markets a week all across Istanbul, and they are never-ending labyrinths full of produce, cheeses, clothes, kitchen implements, shoes, fish, knick knacks, small pieces of furniture, accessories, toys. If it can be displayed on a fold-up table, they’ve got it. We mostly went to ogle the gorgeous food. Stacks and stacks of luscious summer fruits and veggies, plump olives, tangy cheeses. We went kind of nuts — we finally had a kitchen, and all this bounty right at our fingertips for larceny prices ($0.25 for a pound of blood-red, vine ripe tomatoes, for example, or $1 for a kilo of luscious, fragrant figs.). A trip to market is also a great excuse to explore a neighborhood you may not otherwise visit.
At local markets, it’s mostly women doing the buying and men doing the selling. Many of these women are very traditional and modest. When they appear in public, they are covered from head to toe, wearing polyester raincoats over long pants and skirts, their hair covered with scarves (in the heat of a Turkish summer — they are hardier ladies than me). Which makes it all the more surreal and hilarious to see them haggling like mad with the (male) proprieter over piles of ladies’ underwear. One respectable looking older lady I saw was holding a fistful of Day-Glo thongs, shouting her price at the salesman, shaking the panties for greater emphasis.
If you love markets like we do, or simply want to do some great people watching, here’s a list of the markets in Istanbul that we enjoyed:
Sunday:
This was “our market day” for the time we were in Istanbul. We have two:
The Black Sea market in Kasimpasa
I love the idea of this market: people from one city on the Black Sea load up the produce they’ve grown, the bread they’ve baked, and the cheese they’ve made, and drive it overnight to Istanbul. We are talking farm fresh, straight from the producer goodness. The week we made it out here, a local woman said it was actually much reduced for Eid (the three-day holiday after Ramadan), but we were still able to find beautiful loaves of village bread, funky forest-foraged mushrooms, and piles of plump, sweet blackberries.
The Tarlabasi market
Ok, I’ll admit, when we were looking for this market, I was a little leery. It’s not in the best neighborhood, but it feels perfectly safe around the market, and this place is worth finding. It had the largest selection and best prices for food of anywhere we found in Istanbul. And it’s got a lot more than just food: this is the place to get almost anything your heart desires, for very good prices. People don’t speak much English, but we were able to get by with hand gestures and pidgin Turkish. We bought so much food here one week we could barely carry it back to our apartment!
Our favorite memory, though, of the Tarlabasi market is our wonderful chance encounter with Virginia and Michael, a couple from New York that we befriended during our stay in Istanbul. They retired five years ago and have been traveling ever since! Virginia once cooked for heads-of-state in her job as Executive Chef at the Brookings Institution, and Jordan was brave (or foolish) enough to invite her and Michael over for dinner one night. They have the best stories and we want to be like them when we grow up.
Monday:
Located in the upmarket, modern neighborhood of Goztepe on the Asian side of Istanbul, this market is pretty much all food, although at slightly more expensive prices than we found at Tarlabasi (still beats the Carrefour!). We went not only for the market, but because we heard they had great snacks. Once again, though, Ramadan thwarted us (we should have realized you can’t sell many snacks when your customers are fasting.). The day was saved, however, by a kind English gentleman and his Turkish wife, Tomris, who chatted with us, let us follow them around as Tomris did her weekly shopping, and even took us out for tea and a neighborhood tour afterwards!
Wednesday:
For this one, we headed to the neighborhood of Fatih. The market is concentrated around the Fatih Mosque. It’s mostly clothes, but we did find some incredibly sweet dried apricots, the best we have ever tasted. They were an unsightly brown color (not the bright orange you find at the supermarket that have been treated with sulfur), but tasted, I swear, like honey and sunshine. Fatih was also the site of our best panty-haggling viewing.
Open all the time:
These places don’t require marking anything on your calendar.
Balik Pazari
Located right off the main shopping drag of Istiklal Caddesi, this little street is a great place to stock up for a picnic. You’ve got a bakery, a pickle shop, several delis, a little produce stand, and a couple of sweet shops. If you go here for one reason alone, that reason should be the chocolate baklava at Sakarya Tatlicisi.
Karakoy Fish Market
On the Karakoy side of the Galata Bridge, this market isn’t very big, but the fish always looked fresh and we enjoy the restaurant at the far end. Lightly fried sardines right on the water, for just 7 TL (about $3.50 US).
Kadikoy Market
Any excuse to ride a ferry …. We hopped over to Kadikoy to explore one day and found a wonderful street of food shops. It reminded us of Paris — where to begin when we wanted to buy everything?
