I love to take weekend holidays to Konya just for the food. This has led my friends to think I’m a bit daft. But little do they know that, while the city is renowned for its history and spirituality, the food is nothing to scoff at either. In the last decade, the city has become increasingly metropolitan and multicultural, and the food has followed suit. But it hasn’t lost its regional flavor and ties to the past. And just a quick train ride away from Ankara and Istanbul, getting to the city has never been easier.
I start my long day of eating with yağ somunu, literally "oil bread," one of Konya’s innovative new dishes. A must-try on cold, dark mornings when you need an abundance of energy, the dish is not for the faint of heart. As the name suggests, it’s literally bread packed full of oil.
The best place to try it is, in my opinion, Pideci Hasan Şendağlı in the chaotic marketplace of Kadınlar Pazarı. I head there now, dodging a flock of live chickens in the middle of the street to enter this tiny shop, with just five tables and plastic stools. This little hole-in-the-wall is in fact the inventor of the dish. It opened in 1944 after which dozens of copycats popped up all around the city over the years.
The main ingredient of this ingenious dish is Konya blue cheese, a type of cheese that’s very salty and crumbly. It’s very difficult to use and definitely an acquired taste. I have bought a few grams of it to use at home before, only to fail. The ingenuity of this dish lies in how it utilizes this famous but unpopular piece of Konya’s food culture in a way that anyone would love.
Each bread is handmade in the shop’s brick oven. Then it is sliced open and covered in butter, Konya blue cheese and I suspect some kashar cheese to soften the twang of the blue cheese. You can also add Turkish pastrami for an extra kick. The toast that comes out is an oily, crispy bread overflowing with cheese.
One warning for those heading over: Hygiene is not a huge concern for the average customer at this eatery, if you’re worried about COVID-19 you should perhaps order it as a takeaway. People at Kadınlar Pazarı may have not gotten the memo about the necessity of masks.
After experiencing some of Konya’s modern cuisine, I’m craving some foodie history. It’s time to head over to the tomb of Ateş Baz-ı Veli, the cook of the famous Sufi philosopher Mevlana Jalaladdin Rumi. Ateş Baz-ı Veli was a one-in-a-million kind of figure, a man who was not only an important Sufi figure and friend of God but also a chef!
Getting to this tomb is quite the detour located around 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) outside the city of Konya. I went there in a taxi and planned to come back with the same driver. I recommend you do the same because it’s rather difficult to get back.
It’s said that Rumi was the one to give the epitaph of Ateş Baz-ı Veli, or "he who plays with fire," to this famous man. The story goes that one day, there was no wood left in the dervish convent's kitchen for cooking. When the cook reported the situation to Rumi, he joked, "If there is no wood left, put your feet under the cauldron and cook the dish with them." The cook maintained complete obedience to Rumi, who was his spiritual guide. His complete servitude pushed him to try to literally do what Rumi said. He went to the kitchen, put his feet under the cauldron and sprouted fire out of his toes. He cooked the dish on that fire.
When Rumi saw what had happened, he scolded him for showing off his spiritual powers – but he must have also been pleased by his complete obedience to his spiritual teacher because he named him "he who plays with fire." Hundreds of years later, we still know him by this name.
Ateş Baz-ı Veli's tomb, built in the Seljuk period, is a simple building in the garden of a house. The family who lives there takes care of the tomb and has done so for generations. Their experience in living next to this spiritual center has meant that they know a lot about the traditions surrounding the Mevlevis and Ateş Baz, and they are always willing to tell stories to those who head to the site for pilgrimage.
I offered a prayer for Ateş Baz-ı Veli and all of those who followed his example and then approached a small bowl of salt nearby. I have no idea about the origins of this tradition, but this salt is placed within the tomb every night and is said to contain Ateş Baz-ı Veli's spiritual energy. Everyone who visits Ateş Baz scoops up a bag of it and then uses it in their food at home. That way, the gift keeps on giving for months after your visit.
Many know Konya for its etli ekmek, a type of flatbread topped with meat. But when I think of Konya cuisine, I think of a pile of mutton. The people of Konya have many ways of preparing mutton: tandır, oven kebab, tirit, çebiç. This means that vegetarians and vegans will have a tough time in Konya, but meat-eaters will rejoice.
Today, Tiritçi Mithat is my restaurant of choice for consuming my pile of meat. Conveniently placed close by the Mevlana Museum and the year-round market of the “Kadınlar Pazarı,” this casual eatery is full to the brim during lunchtime. People sit, order a serving of their signature (and only) dish, gobble it up, and leave so the next customer can be seated. I usually head early to avoid the crowd, but with my busy schedule, it was impossible. This time, I manage to snag a seat outside and order a small serving. I should save some space for dinner, after all.
Tirit is a dish with humble beginnings. It was originally made as a way of utilizing leftover bread and offal meat, and other meat leftovers. In Konya, they use mutton. In the smack middle of Anatolia, Konya has been a hub for sheep-herding for centuries. The mutton served here is quite inexpensive, delicious and has a pleasant fragrance.
At Tiritçi Mithat, the chef chops leftover bread and fries it in stock. Then chopped mutton covered in tomato paste is poured on top. The whole thing is then covered in yogurt, full of garlic. It’s very heavy, but it’s beyond delicious.
After lunch, I head to Rumi's tomb. I say a quick greeting and prayer at the tomb and then head over to the part of the structure that makes up what was once the Konya Mevlevi dervish convent. There, in the corner, is the convent’s largest room: The "Matbah-ı Şerif," literally "the honorable kitchen."
When followers of Rumi formed a Sufi order to follow his teachings, the Mevlevi Order, the figure of Ateş Baz-ı Veli became a symbol for all Mevlevi cooks. All cooks in the Mevlevi Order, in reference to both their role in their dervish convents and the memory of Ateş Baz-ı Veli, were also called "Ateş Baz."
Mevlevi cooks were known to play with fire both because they were in charge of the kitchen and because they were responsible for educating prospective dervishes. The head cook was the one to decide if a boy had the potential to be a dervish, and once he accepted the student, he was the one who controlled every aspect of their training. For this reason, Mevlevis say the kitchen is where the dervish is cooked. The aspiring dervish, who is "raw," would be given a series of 18 duties, and through those actions attempt to cultivate himself and become "cooked." In fact, the title of “cook” is a clever play on words. The Mevlevi cook’s duty was not to cook food but to cook dervishes in the kitchen!
This is why Mevlevis call the kitchen "Matbah-ı Şerif," in reverence of the space. You can see a representation of this manner of teaching within the kitchen, with even wax figures acting out the teaching. They’re a little scary and old-fashioned, but these figurines do an adequate job of representing what the space would have looked like back in the day.
This tradition of spiritual teaching in the kitchen is perhaps the best excuse I can give for eating a lot during this weekend. I’m going to ignore the fact that Mevlevi dervishes, in fact, practiced eating in moderation. I’m great at fooling myself when it comes to food!
It’s time for dinner. Just a stone’s throw from the Mevlana museum is Lokmahane. If you have the cash to spare, I recommend heartily that you visit this amazing restaurant. It’s a bit pricy but definitely worth it. After the visit, I usually spend months dreaming about the next visit to Konya so I can have the food at Lokmahane once again.
Lokmahane serves local Konya cuisine with a twist of history, integrating the food of the Seljuk and Ottoman periods with a touch of the modern day. Even the restaurant building reflects this: a restored Konya mud-brick house. But one thing that is unfortunately old-fashioned is that the servers speak little English. Because of that, I think it best that I give some detailed and loving recommendations on what I’m eating today to guide you. If you can speak the language a little (or have advanced skills in the Google translate app), feel free to pick something else. Honestly, there isn't one bad dish on the menu.
It’s best to start with bamya çorbası (okra soup), a quintessential Konya dish that’s hard to recreate outside of the country. It begins its life in the summer when baby okra is strung on strings like beads and left to dry in the sun. In the cold Konya winter, these strings are cooked in broth to make a delicious and tangy soup. I personally think it goes great with pickles, and I ordered some as a side. I was spoiled for choice. The walls of Lokmahane are covered with jar upon jar of different types of pickles: cucumber, tomato, cabbage, carrot, okra. Almost every vegetable and fruit you can imagine is here to tickle your fancy – or, rather, to tickle your pickle.
For the main dish, I recommend the kayısılı yahni (roast with apricots). This is a famous sweet and savory Ottoman dish that serves mutton with dried apricots, with a dash of molasses. But if you’re going as a group, I heartily recommend the bütünet, which is a lamb leg that has been roasted for hours. Serving four people, when this dish comes on a bed of bulgur rice the server makes a show of pulling out the bone. The meat is so soft it comes apart with no effort.
For dessert, the must-have is the kabak tatlısı (roasted pumpkin) for dessert. I’ve asked many times, but the staff at Lokmahane have refused to tell me their secret behind their amazing pumpkin dessert. I suspect it’s made by leaving the pumpkin to soak in sugar syrup, dried after a sprinkle of lemon and then roasted in the oven. Or maybe it’s the other way around? I’ll let you know if I ever manage to swindle their top-secret recipe.
I finish my day, full to the brim with rich food, and waddle off to my room. Every time I eat this much, I tell myself never again, and then I proceed to do it all over again. It’s difficult when there are perhaps hundreds of other locations I could have gone to this weekend in Konya. Every time I visit this city, I find yet another world-class restaurant that the cosmopolitan folks from Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir have never heard of.
