Like Turkey itself, the simit -- the round, sesame-encrusted bread ring that is a ubiquitous presence on the streets of Istanbul and most other Turkish cities -- is entertaining some very global ambitions. As CulinaryBackstreets.com reports, the humble simit is now taking on the mighty bagel in New York:
First, longstanding Istanbul baklava maker Güllüoğlu opened a branch in Midtown East and began selling freshly baked simit under the moniker “Turkish bagel.”
Now, a brand-new establishment with an entirely simit-based menu, Simit + Smith, has opened on the Upper West Side, with plans in the works to expand to the Financial District and elsewhere in the city. The eatery offers an array of sandwiches and sweet and savory snack items made with (purists beware!) three different types of simit: original with sesame, whole wheat with sesame or whole grain. Moreover, Simit + Smith seems to be squarely taking aim at the New York bagel market, noting on its website that “Simit have 2/3 the calories and much less fat than bagels or pretzels and contain all natural ingredients with absolutely no sugar.”
But will New Yorkers, notoriously wedded to their bagels, make the switch? The New York Daily News recently got on the story, polling a handful of top bagel connoisseurs about their opinions on simit, with reactions that ranged from enthusiastic to derisive:
In the end, history, nostalgia and Istanbulites love for cream puffs covered in goopy chocolate sauce were not enough to stand up to the forces of development that have been rapidly changing the face of Turkey's largest city. This week, after a drawn out legal battle, the classic and well-loved sweets shop Inci -- which has long claimed to be the birthplace of the profiterole -- was finally shut down and evicted from the historic building it was housed in, which is set to be "restored" and turned into a shopping mall.
The 70-year-old Inci was most likely not the place where the profiterole was invented and probably didn't even have Istanbul's best version of the dish, but the old-school spot was nonetheless an institution, a culinary touchstone for tourists and locals alike and one of the last operating links to an older Istanbul that's quickly disappearing. On the Culinary Backstreets website, Ansel Mullins offers this eulogy for Inci:
For many, the mention of İnci wells up a sentimental memory of the first taste of something sweet in this classic patisserie, but for us, as non-local students of the area’s heritage, it always represented the last of public emblem of Beyoğlu’s non-Muslim community, a culture long on life support. Though the history of İnci – established in 1944 by a Greek migrant from Albania named Lucas Zigoridis (aka Luka Zigori) – is more recent than the late-19th-century heyday of the neighborhood, it was still a part of that tradition.
In what may be a somewhat questionable act of architectural preservation, Baku's historic Sabunchu rail station, a Moorish-influeneced stone structure built in 1926, now has the distinction of the being largest fried chicken shack on the planet. Opened with great fanfare -- check out the this YouTube video from the restaurant's high voltage ribbon-cutting ceremony last month, -- this latest KFC outpost was reportedly built with an investment of 3 million euros, used to restore the railway station, which had been falling apart after years of neglect.
Considering the glee with which Azeri officials are bulldozing historic parts of Baku in order to make way for ever-taller buildings, the opening of this new monster KFC may ultimately be a good thing. Azerbaijan, that land of ironic twists, may be one of the few places in the world where turning a classic railway station into a fried chicken restaurant may actually be considered a step in a positive direction.
While much of the focus (and occasional hand wringing) regarding Turkish foreign policy in recent years has been over Ankara's reengagement with the Middle East, the truth of the matter is that Turkey has been no less active in developing its diplomatic and economic presence in the Balkans. Like in other regions, in the Balkans Turkish diplomacy is working not only to deepen Turkey's political influence there, but also to open new door for Turkish business. (For some background, take a look at this previous post.)
Take a look, for example, at how Turkey is promoting its tea in Macedonia. As an interesting article from SETimes.com makes clear, the effort is about much more than just selling tea. From the article:
Chajkur, the largest producer of tea in Turkey, launched its national drink in several Macedonian cities. The promotional campaign, Friendly Greeting for Friendly Macedonia, offered sample tasting and production presentations.
Abdulkadri Bayraktar, Turkish consul in Macedonia, told SETimes that this investment will bring other Turkish investors to the country....
....Ismail Safi, president of the Turkish group in the parliamentary assembly of the Black Sea Economic Co-operation, told SETimes said that in visiting Macedonia, the goal is not only to offer tea to their Macedonian friends, but also search out for more investment opportunities.
"The main goal was to present the Turkish tea in Macedonia, because we found out that [the product] is not known here enough, and is hard to find. We want Macedonians to get used to it, discover the advantages of tea, and later make some investments … We hope to increase marketing relations in the future," Safi said.
"Macedonia is one of the most important allies and friends of Turkey," Gilaj Daljan, a Turkish MP, said.
Can culinary tourism play an important role in helping create sustainable development in some of the countries along the ancient silk road? A new report recently released by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) says that might be the case, suggesting that a growing demand for "experience based" tourism could open the door for countries to earn tourists' dollars by promoting their gastronomy.
The report, though plagued by poorly written language that often reads like it was taken from a tourism ministry brochure, does offer some interesting insights into how countries in Central Asia (and other parts of the world) are trying to capitalize on their culinary traditions, even if those traditions include, as in Kazakhstan's case, the consumption of horse meat.
Are elected officials in Yerevan trying to take any local color out of the city's food scene? That certainly seems to be the case. Last year, the city's mayor issued a ban on street vendors -- many of them fruit and vegetable sellers -- in an effort to "clean up" Yerevan. More worrisome for Yerevan residents, it now looks like local leaders are turning a blind eye while the city's well-known indoor market, the now shuttered Pak Shuka, is in danger of being demolished by a businessman cum politician who reportedly wants to turn it into a supermarket.
In a detail-rich report, The Armenian Weekly lays out the whole sordid tale:
This blog has previously written about the phenomenal success of Turkish-born Hamdi Ulukaya, who has managed to turn the Chobani brand of yogurt into the United States' most successful purveyor of of "Greek style" yogurt (more "Turkish style" in this case). Ulukaya's is a wonderful rags-to-milky-riches story: born in a small village in eastern Turkey, the businessman came to America, bought a defunct yogurt factory in upstate New York and turned into a fast-growing enterprise that had some $700 million in sales last year.
Ulukaya has been so successful that he's been dubbed the "Steve Jobs of yogurt." In fact, Chobani's success is now a driving factor in a New York state government effort to create a kind of "yogurt valley" in the dairy-producing part of the state where the company and several competitors are located. As the New York Times reports, Governor Andrew Cuomo recently presided over NY's first-ever "Yogurt Summit," designed to further boost the state's booming "Greek style" yogurt biz. From the NYT's report:
The Cuomo administration designed a logo for the meeting, featuring a cow with a spot on its side in the shape of New York State, and the governor wore a lapel pin with the yogurt logo. The administration also commissioned a custom-made backdrop, printed with “New York State Yogurt Summit” in capital letters, for Mr. Cuomo and other dignitaries to sit in front of, like professional athletes at a Super Bowl news conference.
The title of being the birthplace of wine is a contested one, with Georgia, Armenia, Turkey and even Azerbaijan all vying for it. But now Georgia can at least claim that it is officially the "cradle of wine."
As the all-things-Georgian-wine blog Hvino News reports, the European Union has just awarded Georgia the exclusive right to sell wine within its territory with the tagline "Georgia - the Cradle of Wine." From Hvino's dispatch:
According to "Sakstat" (Georgia's statistical institution), until 2011 this brand has belonged to a British company. The new registration allows Georgia to ban any other company using the name without permission. Use of the brand "Cradle of Wine" is supposed to help promote Georgia as the oldest wine-producing country.
But even before Georgians had a chance to raise a celebratory glass, the Financial Times weighed in on the question of Tbilisi's plan to label every bottle of wine with the now exclusive slogan, calling the victory in Brussels a "mixed blessing":
Emphasising its rich heritage is the obvious way for Georgian wine to make its mark in a highly competitive global market. But some consumers may more readily associate cradles with babies or bottle racks than the history of the Alazani Valley.
While ramen instant noodle might be an ubiquitous presence on supermarket shelves around the world, there's one country that has yet to discover the budget dish's delights: Turkey. But that is about to change. As the Wall Street Journal's Japan edition reports, Nissin Foods, the Japanese maker of the instant noodles that have been a lifesaver for students around the world, is preparing to invade the Turkish market. From the WSJ:
On Tuesday, Nissin said it will spend $23.5 million to buy a 50% stake in pasta maker Bellini Gida Sanayi A.S. from Turkey’s biggest consumer product maker Yildiz Holdings A.S.
In Turkey, homemade dishes are popular and there’s no market for instant noodles. But Nissin is banking that Turkey’s rapid economic growth will start pushing busy workers to simplify their meals.
One of the attractive points of the Turkish market is that its population is expected to grow 1 million per year by the year 2030 from the current 75 million. The nation’s per capita gross domestic product also exceeds $10,000, suggesting it has high growth potential.
Another promising factor is that the market’s average age is 28 compared with Nissin’s home market of Japan where the largest segment of the population is in their 60s.
Nissin expects annual demand in Turkey will quickly grow to more than 1 billion instant noodle bowls within five to ten years, compared with 5.5 billion bowls in Japan.
In Turkey and other predominantly-Muslim countries, iftar -- the nightly meal that breaks the Ramadan fast -- has gone from being a humble affair based around dates, soup and some freshly baked bread to something much more elaborate (at least for those who can afford it). These days, hosting lavish iftar dinners has become a way for people to make a statement, either social, economic or -- as in the case when Israel's ambassador was pointedly not invited to a 2010 iftar hosted by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- political. (Update - This year its appears both the Israeli and Syrian envoys were not invited to Erdogan's iftar.) Here's how I described this trend in an article I wrote for the Christian Science Monitor in 2008, when I visited a large iftar dinner that was being hosted at a ballroom in Istanbul's swank Bosphorus-side Ciragan Palace hotel:
On a recent night, some 700 guests of a discount supermarket chain were seated at candlelit tables as a five-piece band played traditional Turkish music and a swarm of waiters in crimson-colored tuxedo jackets brought them plates of roast lamb.
"For a company to have iftar here is a kind of statement," says Ulku Karadaglilar, an executive at the Ciragan. "It's like 'Where did you have your wedding or your gala event?' They only have one chance to do it all year, so they want the best."
