Turkey needs visitors this year more than ever, and a world away from recent events, Urla is where food lovers should head. With its olive groves, wine country and hip food scene, says Susan Low, it’s like a Turkish Tuscany
Looking out onto the calm waters of the Aegean, here on the Çeşme Peninsula, Urla’s port is a place to breathe out and relax – but this is a town of two parts, and first, food lovers need to get to grips with the bustle of the inland Old Town. Start off in pedestrian-only Sanat Sokogi (Artisan Street) and the Malgaca Pazari, an Ottoman-era marketplace. They buzz with cafés, bakeries and stalls selling colourful piles of local produce.
Eating in atmospheric café Beğendik Abi (facebook.com/begendikabi), run by Handan Kaygusuzer, is like dining at a friend’s house. Her home-style cooking – stuffed vegetables, hearty soups, slow-cooked meat and sweets such as kadayıflı muhallebi (a creamy, crunchy-topped milk pudding) will put a beatific smile on your face.
The walls of nearby Şafak Lokantasi (instagram.com/safak_lokantasi), a tradesman’s caff, are adorned with black and white photos that have hung there since 1974. It serves a huge variety of breakfasts and lunches, from meaty güveç stews to buttery pilau rice and yogurt-laced veg →
dishes. The cooking is incredible; you’ll eat like a sultan for a fiver.
Thoroughly modern Hiç Lokanta (hicurla.com), in a renovated 160-year-old theatre, is run on sustainable principles by Duygu Özerson Elakdar and her husband Taha. They serve fish sausages made from the invasive lionfish, sous-vide goat and imaginative veg dishes enhanced by wild herbs and plants from their olive forest. They also make excellent oil, and you can book foraging and cooking classes, tastings and olive-harvest tours.
THE HOTTEST ICE CREAM AND COOLEST PEPPER
Tiny İrmik Hanım Patisserie (irmikhanim.com), run by Cordon Bleu-trained Esra Özkulter, serves gelato-style goat’s milk ice cream. Go for the one flavoured with mastic, a rare, expensive resin from a tree that grows only on the Çeşme peninsula and on the nearby Greek island of Chios.
Each Friday, Urla’s bus station is transformed into a farmers’ market that overflows with fresh produce from the surrounding countryside. Get there before noon and feast your eyes on mounds of fragrant herbs, courgettes and artichokes, along with tahini ground to order, halva and fresh cheeses. The bargain souvenir: bright-red dried urfa pepper flakes, which sell for 50p fo
