Vegetarian Yemek in Kebabistan (2 of 3)
Turkey
Walking around town as the soup settled in our tums, Trevor insisted that I try a snack he had just discovered and fallen in love with. “Tastes like falafel, but it’s not quite the same,” he gushed. “I have no idea what it is, but it doesn’t taste like meat.” We found a hawker selling it and bought one. The man rolled up the pasty substance into little balls with his palms, placed them together with some tomatoes, onto a pita bread, and rolled that up.
I had always assumed that those vendors were selling kofte, so I asked the man what it was. “Kofte,” he grunted. “Et.” Uh-oh. Et equals meat, and kofte is what the Turks call meatballs. I usually have them fried, but these tasted semi-raw, truly more like falafel than what I had come to know as kofte. I think it broke poor Trevor’s heart to learn the ingredients of his newest fave snack, so he munched on some corn-on-the-cob while we went in search for some lokum (Turkish delight, sweets).
Soon the tummies started rumbling again. We realized that neither of us had explored the other side of town yet, the side across the main street, so we deemed that it was about time to do so. Maybe, just maybe, a vegetarian’s paradise was over there, just waiting to be discovered, and all we needed to do was cross the road. (Granted, crossing roads in Turkey can be quite the adventure in itself, but that’s a whole other story.)
No such luck. We walked and we walked, it got dark and cold. Most of the shops had already closed. Otherwise, their signs advertised “Et lokantasi” or a whole variety of meat kebabs and meat pides (pizzas). We must have been standing there in the middle of the dark, deserted street for some time, just gazing up at the signs, for a man soon approached us and offered his help.
Rubbing our stomachs and eating air with imaginary spoons, we got the message across that we were looking for a place to eat. He was so excited that he spun around on his heels and took off, walking deeper into the dark street. We were still standing there somewhat stupefied, undecided if we should follow this stranger into a dark, quiet street, when he realized that we had not budged. “Gel! Gel, gel!” (“Come!”) he shouted, pointing to a place around the corner.
Indeed, just around the corner, bright white neon light spilled onto the black street. It came from a lokantasi, and the owner, curious at the sight of the three of us, came out into the street. His restaurant was closed now, he said in Turkish, no more food left. That explained why it was almost empty.
However, we were after vegetarian food, and we had yet to convey this point across to them. When they paused to think of nearby places to grab some grub, we hurriedly jumped in and tried all manner of communicating that we could not eat meat. Trevor was busy digging in his pockets for a sheet of paper, where a kind soul had written down how to say “I don’t eat meat” in Turkish. Meanwhile, I was blubbering things like “Et yok” (literally, “meat none”) and going “Moo” while furiously shaking my head. Trevor finally found that piece of paper and loudly pronounced every syllable slowly and deliberately. By the time he finished, the men were laughing and nodding, which got us giggling too.
We created quite a commotion, for before we knew it there were three other men and five children who had appeared out of the dark. They stood all around us, observing us and laughing along, for our confused expressions and resigned moans must have been quite amusing. After what seemed like an age, the metaphorical light bulb lit above the crowd’s heads, as one man exclaimed, “Corba!” A moment of hushed silence, and then all heads were bobbing up and down excitedly, big smiles and eyes sparkling, as though they had all come up with the solution in one collective effort. We still had no clue what corba might be, but were confident of one thing: it had no meat.
“Corba, corba,” they kept trying to convince us, and then they fell silent again, but only momentarily. Some discussion, two groups had formed. One group – the children and the lokantasi owner – pointed in one direction, saying “Corba, corba, very good.” The other group – the man who had directed us there, and two others – gestured in the opposite direction, saying the same thing.
Trevor and I looked right at one group, left at the other, then at each other and burst out laughing. We intimated our confusion at who to follow, our heads turning furiously to one group and then to the other, our bodies about to take off in one direction but suddenly halting and changing direction, and we soon had the whole group in fits of laughter. What a sight. The bunch of us, standing in a pool of white neon light in the middle of a dark, empty street, laughing madly on that still, chilly night.
We finally went with the man who had brought us there in the first place. Saying our thanks and good-byes to the group, we walked on, eager to finally discover just what corba was, hoping it was a secret dish that only the locals knew about. Around another corner, he pointed us to a big neon sign that said “Ali Baba Corba Pasa Palas.”
We walked into another big white room lit by bright neon lights, and saw three big silver cauldrons by the entrance. A mustachioed man in jacket and tie lifted the lids, unraveling the mystery. Corba meant soup, and all they served there was soup, soup and more soup. Lentil soup, chicken soup and meat soup. But just soup. They were open all night and all day though, so we thought that we might return later, since the lentil soup we had earlier was still in our systems.
Read Part 1 of Vegetarian Yemek in Kebabistan and Part 3 of Vegetarian Yemek in Kebabistan.
