
Furthermore, I don't think one can argue that most restaurants are owned and run by people who went into the business on a whim; the people who work in the kitchen are not trained chefs. Each restaurant's menu looks and tastes the same: chicken on a skewer; beef or mutton on a spit; fish, grilled or deep-fried. Each item is prepared in the same way. A liver restaurant, or ciğerci, is a welcome change from the norm. To drink, one can choose from only Coke, ayran or şalgam; alcoholic beverages are either beer, wine or rakı.
Except in urban centres like Istanbul, which admittedly has some wonderful restaurants, both Turkish and ethnic, attempts at venturing beyond the standard Turkish fare often results in disaster: a pizza place I know of serves thin-crust pizza on maza bread, and toppings include canned corn and canned mushrooms.
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Dairy products are interestingly mass-produced by large national companies, unlike in Canada, where milk goes against the grain and is still very much a local product. One cannot find Beatrice milk outside of Quebec easily, nor can one find Neilson's milk in the U.S. The result is UHT milk, each brand tasting as artificial as the next; and cheese which likewise doesn't taste of milk or butter.
However, there is hope: once I got beyond my North American brainwashing against anything unpasteurized, I discovered a rich world of homemade dairy products, often for significantly less money than what was available at the supermarkets. My neighbourhood sütçü became my new best friend, delivering as much fresh milk as I wanted daily. I just had to make sure I boiled it slowly enough and long enough to kill any scary bacteria. Likewise, a trip into the nearby mountains yielded lots of homemade cheeses; a little inquiry led to sellers in the city.
I'd like to add that Saray Çiftliği makes the only kaşar cheese (the closest thing to mozarella in this country) that really tastes like cheese, and is available at their own stores and at Metro, but certainly not at all supermarkets. Homemade ''stinky'' cheeses, such as deri peyniri (cheese cured in sheepskin), are truly wonderful too, and as a result, I never miss blue cheese.
Now if I could just find some organic, free-range meat or poultry, and a few restaurants that serve it, I'd be happy!
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