Cafe Lost is a great place for hookah and drinks in Balcova, Izmir

Located near Balçova Termal Otel and Izmir University of Economics, Lost is a great place for drinks and trying creative blends of hookah (nargile in Turkish). This cafe tends to get pretty crowded closer to 9 p.m., so if you wish to sit outside (recommended in summer and for hookah smokers), come early.

Lost opened in 2007, offering Mexican cuisine, pizzas, a variety of pasta, red-meat and chicken menus, waffles, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, and cocktails. Since then it became a popular meeting place for people from nearby districts and guests at the Termal Hotel and Crown Plaza.

“Lost” Cafe Bar features delicious Turkish coffee with mastic (sakızlı kahve), and their alcoholic drinks are very affordable (6 TL for a gin-tonic and up to 15 TL for a cocktail). International visitors especially may also appreciate free Wi-Fi.

Drinks at Cafe Lost are generous and very affordable

Another highlight of Lost is its offer of creative blends of hookah. In addition to the standard aromas of, say, apple or water-melon, Lost has two blends that are worth noting:

• Angelina: if you feel like having something light and fruity;
• Lost: a slightly stronger pleasant mix of different flavors.

Red meat and chicken menus, on the other hand, are average. Despite several names on the list (from Fajitas to, surprisingly, Beef Stroganoff on the chicken menu), the dishes mostly come as strips of your chosen meat with French fries, tomatoes, cucumbers, and yellow rice on the side. The pizza menu may offer a more creative choice.

Bottom line: If you are looking for an affordable place for drinks, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, with toned-down music, on a lively street with flowers and palm trees, go straight to the “How to Get There” section.

Lost would also be a great choice if you are a hookah enthusiast. This cafe is not recommended, however, if this would be your first time smoking hookah: Your future hookah experiences elsewhere may simply never match the quality of hookah at “Lost” Cafe Bar!

How To Get Here

“Lost” Cafe Bar
Korutürk Mah. Balçova
Vali Hüseyn Öğütcen Cad. No: 21/A
(in the vicinity of Termal Hotel and Kipa-Balçova)
Tel. 0232-258-2522


View Larger Map

Göz Göz Büfe & Kokoreç Evi

Although it doesn’t look like much, Göz Göz Büfe & Kokoreç Evi is one place in Izmir’s Göztepe area where you can eat cheap, delicious and local food. The biggest attraction is this eatery’s kokoreç, a toasted bread with fried lamb intestines, which offers generous amounts of meat with just the right amount of spices.

Göz Göz Büfe & Kokoreç Evi is located across from Adnan Saygun Culture Center. It is a small place with just three tables indoors and a couple of tables outdoors, if the weather permits. Open until 1 am, it is a perfect eatery to satisfy the traditional Turkish craving for a kokoreç after a night out. (After living in Izmir for almost two years, I’ve somewhat fallen into the same habit.)

The kokoreç that Göz Göz offers is easy on spices but generous with meat and is probably one of the most delicious examples of this Turkish delicacy that I’ve tried so far. The place has an official certificate stating that it meets the necessary sanitary standards, which is crucial with meals like kokoreç.

A fresh calamari stew

Apart from kokoreç, Göz Göz offers various types of Turkish and Cypriot foods, meatballs, and soups and stews of the day.

For example, if you come here on a Saturday around 1 pm, you may ask for a plate of calamari stew. One of Göz Göz owners, Ibrahim Capak, goes out on his fishing boat early in the morning each Saturday to get some fresh calamari. When he comes back, his wife, Behiye Capak, cooks them for 2.5 hours, adding carrots, potatoes and spices to offer Göz Göz Büfe patrons a fresh “kalamar yahni”.

The kokoreç here costs 4 TL and the daily stew is about 3.50 TL. You may have ayran, tea or a cup of Turkish coffee with your meal.

Two of Göz Göz Büfe & Kokoreç Evi owners, Behiye and Ibrahim Capak

The decorations in Göz Göz Büfe range from the traditional evil-eye beads and the portrait of Atatürk to Turkish watercolors, a bow with arrows and the flag of Göztepe football team. This may not be the place to bring your business partners to, but Göz Göz Büfe & Kokoreç Evi is a good choice to eat local and cheap.

How To Get Here

Göz Göz Büfe & Kokoreç Evi
1192/C Mithatpaşa Cad.
(Adnan Saygun Kultur Merkezi karsisi)
Tel. 0232-247-1323
Home delivery and take-out services available


Daha Büyük Haritayı Görüntüle

Asansor Restaurant opens for dinner at 7:30 pm

When I first visited Asansör in December 2007, it was a half-empty restaurant with a breathtaking view and shockingly average food. For a prime location as this, any gustatory disappointment was unforgivable.

Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one who thought so. In February 2009, the Izmir Municipality took charge of the historical Elevator, presently turning it into one of the hottest dining places in the city. The new administration also introduced a new chef, Mr. Mehmet Sirkeci, a choice we cannot but commend.

The restaurant opens for dinner at 7:30 p.m., about an hour before the spectacular sunset over the Izmir Bay. It’s a good idea to arrive a little early to savor the view and have a drink or two in the bar. Reservations, generally recommended, are absolutely a must if you’re visiting on Friday night or over the weekend.

The food at Asansor is no longer a disappointment

Upon my first visit since the restaurant changed hands, the food in Asansör finally matched my expectations. My bonfile with veggies, herbs and mushrooms (Isırgan Otlu Fleto Sarma for 19 TL) was delightful. The T-Bone (25 TL) was slightly overcooked if you like your steak rare, but a bloody steak is so foreign to Turkey that this is hardly a crime. The restaurant also offers a wide selection of the more traditional Turkish kebabs, which, rest assured, are cooked just the way they should be.

Coupled with a nice wine, Asansör cuisine finally offers a treat to your taste. And the restaurant’s unchanging trump card – the excellent view of the Izmir Bay and the city skyline make it worthwhile to celebrate any special occasion in Asansör.

For more background on the historical significance of Asansör or to learn the restaurant’s location and contact info, please revert to our earlier post: Asansor: The Best View of Izmir.

This cafe boasts 4000-m2 area with tables both indoors and outdoors

Palamutluk Bahce Café, as the Turkish name suggests, welcomes you to a garden under centuries-old Valonia oak trees. Here peacocks roam free, squirrels play in the trees in summer and the atmosphere of peacefulness and tranquility can make your breakfast or a barbecue party an unforgettable event.

Palamutluk Bahce Café offers some of the best examples of Aegean cuisine, with meatballs, salads, goat cheese and a variety of borek. (Special tip from Eat in Izmir: Make sure you try Palamutluk’s sigara boregi. It has earned highest marks from our food critics when we visited this place in summer 2009.)

In the afternoon, you can request a barbecue grill (mangal) and enjoy best cuts of meat grilled in the open.

Palamutluk Bahce Café is open every day for breakfast, barbecues and special events, including weddings. It is surrounded by extensive gardens of oranges and tangerines in Izmir’s Guzelbahce area and may be perfect for a Sunday’s outing.

Exotic birds roam freely in Palamutluk Bahce Cafe under centuries-old oak trees

It is highly recommended to visit Palamutluk Bahce Café when the weather is nice. Although they do have indoor facilities, you wouldn’t want to miss the fresh air with a scent of blooming citrus trees.

Finally, a meal wouldn’t be complete without a cup of Turkish tea or coffee. Both were served fresh here and passed the strictest judgment of Eat in Izmir hard-to-please tea lovers.

Arguably the biggest disadvantage of this place – especially for tourists visiting Izmir – is its distance from the city center. Yet others may enjoy it even more so for being away from the busy city.

How to Get There:

Palamutluk Bahce Cafe:
Buladanalti Kumesi
110 Sok. No: 21 1923/A-25
Guzelbahce, Izmir

Tel: 0232 234 6092

Website: www.palamutluk.com

Café Köşk Garden: Organic Breakfast in an Odd Location

Köşk Garden in Güzelyalı

Of the many breakfast places in Izmir, I was always particularly curious about Café Köşk Garden. Situated in Güzelyalı just opposite a prime military spot – Hava Kuvvetleri Hastanesi – it seems to be breaking all rules concerning a café’s “perfect location”.

Being neither by the seaside, nor away from the summer-hot city (and the urban legend goes, you can’t run a successful breakfast place anywhere but these two locations), it seems almost too odd for a timid customer to venture in. And yet, the pink two-storey mansion on its territory, its covered large garden and the offer of an “Organic Breakfast” made Café Köşk Garden too appealing for me to pass by.

Cafe Köşk Garden first opened three years ago

What first impressed me was the variety of dishes listed in the colorful menu. Open from 7 a.m. till midnight, seven days a week, Café Köşk Garden can tempt the customers with crepés, pasta, salads and main-course offers. But on this Sunday morning, my main interest was the organic breakfast.

It came in its “light” summer version of eggs, salad, goat cheese, olives, bread, honey, exceptional tatlı lor and apricot jam. The winter version, we were told, also contains a variety of salami, tomato paste, etc. Although we were four people, the waiter suggested ordering a smaller, two-person breakfast, and it, indeed, sufficed.

Priced at 10 TL (per the one-person breakfast), it wasn’t anything unusual. But then, a breakfast is always just a breakfast – delicious, healthy and, honestly, quite ordinary. We were pleased with the fast service, freshness of the ingredients and the cool provided by the cover over the garden.

The dozen tables at Köşk Garden start filling up later in the day

For those who like playing backgammon and enjoy smoking hookah (nargile), Café Köşk Garden has lower tables in the corner of the garden and most suitable for these pastimes. For the customers who always need to stay connected, the cafe offers free wireless and a quite, comfortable environment for working or surfing.

EatinIzmir.com will probably be returning to Café Köşk Garden, perhaps not for breakfast this time, but certainly for the more interesting-looking dishes on the menu.

How to Get There:

Cafe Köşk Garden

Mithatpaşa Cad. Gürsel Aksel Blv. No 1121

Güzelyalı, Izmir

Tel: 0232 224 7377 (info & reservations)

Email: engincimen35@hotmail.com

Your wedding restaurant

Beygua restaurant in Urla

Beygua is not exactly the type of a restaurant that we normally tell you about when suggesting the best eating places in Izmir. But, located by the seaside in the sunny Urla in Izmir province, Beygua is certainly one of the best places to celebrate you wedding. Plus, they do serve good food in Beygua.

There is little information about this restaurant on the web beside the basic information about its location, and yet Beygua is hugely popular among couples getting married in Izmir (or families celebrating sunnet – circumcision – of their boys). Sometimes reservations to hold your festivities here need to be made six months in advance! What makes Beygua so popular even in the absence of an official website?

Naturally, word of mouth. First, Beygua has one of the best views of the sunset over the Aegean, but that’s not all.

Beygua, view at the sunset

Everything related to your wedding festivities at Beygua is decided by YOU. Of course, if this is what you want. The type of flowers at the entrance, or lighting during your first dance, or even the napkin holder that matches the “theme” of your wedding. The owners of Beygua restaurant will personally greet you every time you come by and guide you through the entire preparation process. It is, perhaps, the flexibility of Beygua owners that makes every couple coming here feel that this is “their” restaurant.

And, most importantly, the food – Turkish and Mediterranean – served here is also very good. The Russian salad and most of the Turkish meze (small portions of food usually served with alcohol – especially, raki) never let us down in Beygua. However, sarma (grape leaves with meat or rice) was less successful. The choice of fruit and vegetables at the restaurant is always from the freshest, and the most practical main course to order for your wedding here is chicken. Not only is it more economical when trying to feed a hundred hungry guests  , but Beygua’s chef also makes it taste much better than just “like chicken”.

Anyone willing to see Beygua and taste its best dishes before making the reservation is welcome to come to the Sunday brunch at the restaurant, held every week from 10 am till 2 pm.

Recommended Recipe: Sarma (aka dolma)

Ingredients

Delicious Turkish sarma

1 (16 ounce) jar grape leaves (or other vine leaves)

1 1/2 cups rice

2 tablespoons tomato paste

2 onions, finely minced

2 tablespoons dried currants

2 tablespoons pine nuts

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon mint

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon olive oil

lemon wedge

Directions

Sauté onions in olive oil in pan, add rice and add hot water to cover.

Cover and simmer until rice is half cooked, about 10 minutes.

Turn off heat, add tomato paste, currants, nuts, and spices. Let mixture cool.

To prep the grape leaves, rinse in warm water and remove the stems.

When rice mixture is cool, place 1 teaspoon or less in center of leaf, fold in right and left sides, then roll the leaf until you have a tiny ‘cigar’.

Place the dolma in a steamer pot.

Repeat until all grape leaves and/or stuffing is finished.

Add water to steamer cover and simmer for 30-45 minutes or until the rice inside the dolma is totally cooked.

Traditionally this is served cold.

Squeeze lemon over the dolma immediately before serving.

How to get there:

Beygua Restaurant

Beygua’s address: Şehit Kemal Sokak, No:92, Urla – İzmir, Turkey

Phone: 0232 766 1890

Topçu (Artilleryman) is the nickname of the founder of the place. Who served in the army as an artilleryman. Topçu is serving most probably the best “çöpşiş” a Turkish kebap made of small cuts of lamb.

Topçu was founded in 1957 and start serving ”choep shish“ as the first place in Izmir to do so. Eatinizmir visited Chesme branch of Topchu  which is equally mastered in cuisine as the main restaurant in izmir.

23 years ago Cevat Dev take over the place and make some gentle touches in order to perfect the service and ambiance without changing the taste and the recipe at all.

Topçu is ofcourse famous of it’s Choep Shish but there are also other alternatives that you should give a try if you are not a big fan of lamb. Still don’t forget that it is what you should try first.

Cop Sis

Ayvalık Şehir Klübü, entrance

I’ve eaten in many good restaurants in the past couple of years in places as far apart as Izmir and New York. Only a few of those restaurants became true discoveries. Ayvalık Şehir Klübü (in Ayvalık, an old town 2.5 hours away from Izmir)  is a lucky exception. It is one of the best seafood restaurants in and around Ayvalık, and its delicious octopus and mussels dishes have earned compliments to the chef from the food critics at EatInIzmir.

Unlike in most restaurants favored by the tourists visiting the neighboring island of Cunda (aka Alibey), some twenty minutes from Ayvalık, the food in Ayvalık Şehir Klübü is reasonably priced (we spent about 140 YTL for a dinner with alcohol for four people) and the portions are quite generous.

You can go with six to eight kinds of meze – a variety of appetizers usually accompanying a bottle of Turkish rakı – or you could order a small meze and the main course (this is a seafood restaurant, so fish would be the best choice).

Ayvalık Şehir Klübü is right by the sea and a great sunset view from here is guaranteed. Excellent location and great food allowed Ayvalık Şehir Klübü to exist for more than a hundred years. Ayvalık Şehir Klübü, as we know it, was created in the early years of the Turkish Republic. Until then it was the most famous French cafe in Ayvalık, Cafenion Kanelo. It then became known as the Taş Kahve and in 1934 – Ayvalık Şehir Klübü.

Recommended Recipe: Clams in Wine Sauce

Ingredients:

• 50 small clams in shell, scrubbed
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup white wine
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

Directions:

Clams, or sand mussels, from Ayvalık Şehir Klübü

Carefully wash clams to make sure no dirt or sand particles remain.

Add olive oil into a large pot and heat it up on medium. Add garlic. Saute until it becomes tender. Add white wine. Keep boiling until half of the wine evaporates.

Add clams, close the lid and steam until clams start opening up. Add butter, close the lid, cook until most of the clams open. Throw away any clams that didn’t open. Add parsley and serve as a meze or with pasta.

How to get there:

Ayvalık Şehir Klübü

Ayvalık Şehir Klübü is located by the sea in the city center of Ayvalık.
Tel.: 0266-312-1519, 0266-312-3676