BEST LITTLE RESTAURANT IN TOWN

One of our favorite places in Istanbul to have lunch -- well, I should say our "very" favorite place -- was along the Bosphorus at the foot of a darling little town called Kuzguncuk. If you follow this road up the hill a bit you will come to a very old Sephardic Jewish temple, closed now for lack of a congregation, but preserved in pristine form for future re-opening or, for lucky people like us a quick walk-through to see all the treasures inside. This town originally had a very high percentage of resident Jews, and still has some but hardly enough for a minyan.

On the Bosphorus sits our favorite restaurant, Ismet Baba. It is a fish restaurant, and the tourists rarely know about it. There is nothing pretentious about the place, but the food is absolutely exquisite.


We saved our Saturdays for doing errands while Semra, the sweet young woman who was the "super's" wife and lived in the basement of our apartment, would clean our flat from top to bottom. Ahmet, our driver, would pick us up about 9 a.m. and we'd be off, mostly for errands but sometimes for a bit of sightseeing too. At 1 p.m. we would always find ourselves at Ismet Baba having a wonderful round of mezze before we tackled an exceptionally fresh fish or, on occasion, a succulent piece of lamb. With this we always had a glass of the Turkish raki (pronounced Rah-kuh), the equivalent of Greek Ouzo or middle-eastern Arak.

We always ended up with a dessert that was under a sign that said "Formul" so we called it that. We never learned that Formul meant anything other than "formula," which of course didn't make any sense to us, but then there was a lot we didn't understand! Formul was made by placing banana slices on a plate, loading a big dollop of kaymak (a non-sweet whipped cream, sometimes made of Water buffalo milk) on top the bananas, scattering some chopped nuts over the top and then drizzling the whole thing generously with "bal" - honey. As simple as it was, it was absolutely delicious and we always ended our meal with formul.

But there was another reason why we liked this particular restaurant.

The view was simply stupendous! We were on the Asian side of Istanbul and we could look out at the European side. The main part of the city was off to the left side of the picture, and what we were looking at were camiis (mosques), apartments and lovely expensive houses. And of course we could watch the huge oil tankers navigating carefully down the Bosphorus from the Black Sea. There were also ferry boats, fishing boats and boats loaded with tourists. Living in Istanbul put us on each of those boats from time to time, but from Ismet Baba we could kick back with our raki and enjoy the whole afternoon if we wished.

Since Ahmet was always with us, he did all the speaking and ordering, at least until I learned enough Turkish to make myself understood. These fellows were are regular waiters; as I recall, the man on the left was the manager (or maybe he was Ismet himself!). All I know is that they took very good care of us.

One day we went to Ismet Baba and midway through lunch our waiter (neither of the above but someone we hadn't seen before) disappeared. We were told by the waiter who replaced him that he didn’t like people who drank (Ahmet and I had ouzo and Jer a martini) so he went to the mosque to pray. While we thought that was pretty funny, at least he had the strength of his convictions, which I had to appreciate. But that wasn't the only thing that went wrong that day. As usual, I ordered Formul. I waited ever so long for them to bring it (Milking the water buffalo, maybe?) and when it came, there was no kaymak. “Finished,” they said. (Which is what all the semi-English speaking Turks say when they are out of something.)

To this day, when one of us asks if we have something in the house and it has been used up, the person being asked will reply "Finished!" And we get a good laugh -- and we remember how much fun we had at Ismet Baba, even when the waiter and the kaymak were "finished."

And now just a point of information. We lived in Istanbul in 1991 and 1992. Who knows if Ismet Baba is still there? Not me! Things have changed a lot, I hear.