Istanbul Street Foods

Playing: Muppet Show Theme Song-Ok Go and the Muppets
Reading: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Istanbul has so many interesting street stands all over the place and it really does make for good eats! Most of it is pretty cheap and ready to go, so it's perfect for a snack or in some cases a small meal!

All over Istanbul, you'll see brightly colored tents and booths selling ice cream. Turkey's ice cream is so different compared to the ice cream we have here in the states. It's made out of goat milk, so it's stretchy and kind of chewy. When you bite into it, it will stretch with you. It's unlike anything I've ever had and it's absolutely delicious. All the booths have the same flavors: raspberry, lemon, pistachio, chocolate, caramel, vanilla, and strawberry. I always got lemon and pistachio or raspberry and pistachio because those flavors are harder to find here. There are little kids, who will beg you to buy them some by pointing at the vendor and then at themselves. My dad bought some for the kids. However, I was having a dumb day and I thought the kids were telling me that the vendor was their dad.

Everywhere you go, there are people selling boiled and grilled corn. Some also sell roasted hazelnuts, but there are more corn stands. The corn and hazelnuts alike are kind of mealy. Corn, where I live, is sweet, but the corn sold on these stands are more mealy and dry. For 1 TL, I can't really complain and my family did buy corn more than once.

By the sea (and I saw one at the subway station), are people with buckets selling raw mussels. You buy one and the vendor cracks it open for you to eat. You can squeeze lemon into it, if you like things tarter. No one in my family tried this because we were too scared of food poisoning. On the last night we were in Turkey, we saw this boy eating them. He ate around 10-12 in a row and he was so fast! The vendor couldn't keep up with him.

This was probably one of the odder things that I saw. They take a wooden skewer and spin melted sugar candy around it. You can pick from orange, lime, lemon, raspberry, or cream, but I got a mixture of all of the flavors. It's like a lollipop that's kind of melted. You can bite into it and it's extremely sticky. The portion is small, but since it's so sweet, it's OK. Definitely worth trying and how could I not, when the vendor had such sick hair?

What do they sell all over your country/town? In southern California, you can find frozen yogurt and cupcake stores everywhere!