Meals in Turkey

Dining is quite affordable in Turkey. Rick's latest Istanbul guidebook (published this month), describes places where you could get a budget lunch for 20TL ($7) or a nicer dinner for 100TL ($35 for two courses), and more in between. Sharable items like "meze" are common starters.

There are obviously a variety of options, but overall I found the food to be less expensive in Turkey than I expected.. There are plenty of places where you can get doner kebap for lunch (or dinner) and we loved it. Cost about $5.

However, be aware... there was one place we ate near the Blue Mosque and as soon as we were seated they brought a number (10 or so) of small appetizers. We did not even have our menus yet. There were about 8 of us. We ordered, ate and received the bill and were charged $7 per appetizer. We happened to be with 2 people from Istanbul and although they argued with the waiter, manager, and after a shouting match we still had to pay! One of the older women had picked up the tab, so the charge was already on her credit card before we were aware of what happened. The people threatened to report them, post a bad review on the internet, but the manager just said we should have known we would have to pay for something if we ate it!!

I just returned from Turkey with my 16 yo daughter. We averaged around $25 a day for all our meals and snacks. We are also are very frugal but she had a lot of fresh pomegranate juice each day. And baklava! We aren't really restaurant people but I also refuse to eat Doner Kababs (I dislike sandwiches). I had a lot of fabulous soups, dolmas, these spinach pancake things and seafood from local places. And there is always the 1 Lira sesame bagel to start your day! And the street rice stuffed muscles are to die for!!! Oh and on the water you have to get the 8 Lira fish sandwich (I just ate the fish). And for 3 lira there are these amazing donuts! I live for street food and local non tourist restaurants. We walked off the main street about 4 blocks and found most things around 1/4 of the price.