Enjoy the welcome sample of Sultan tea while you shop. There is a vacuum packing machine at this…read morelocation which makes it easy to transport back home and preserve freshness! Shop owners are polite and speak English.

Amazing service. Super friendly with amazingly fluent English. Plenty of wonderful Turkish delight…read moreand samples. Mustafa, thank you for the kindness and directions.

The spices looked and smelled wonderful. The rolls of Lokum, Turkish Delight looked good and i…read morepurchased 3 kg to share with family and friends over the holidays. All purchased goods were sealed in vacuum packed bags for travel. Three weeks later I discovered maggot worms inside the sealed bag of Lokum. After opening the bag and box there were worms on the Lokum itself. There appear to be no worms in the spices so far.

Gözde is loaded with high quality specialty foods from around Turkey. Adam is particularly helpful…read morewhen I go there. When you go, ask for him by name. I always drop in whenever I need to buy Turkish delight or high quality spices.

Walking around Istanbul and needing an authentic dinner place....i, of course, turned to yelp for…read morehelp! Found this place close by with ravishing reviews, so why not. Get there and easily seated. Small place but people were constantly going in and out and place was buzzing with tourist and locals alike. Menu properly labelled with prices so not a tourist trap. Sat down and ordered the lamb chops and the Adana kebabs (minced meat). Both dishes outstanding. The lamb chops were the best I've ever had. Grilled just right to perfection. Seasoned well with Turkish spices and meat was juicy. The kebabs were the same. Juicy and succulent and perfectly seasoned. Came with complimentary lavash and spicy hummus dip and some pickled veggies. Service quick and portion sizes just right. When in Istanbul, a must try for sure. Cheers! Happy eating!

I was going to try the turkey lamb chop. So I pick a restaurant close to grand plaza. It was close…read moreto the tram station. There are four chops in the set. The chop was pan fried to almost well. I am guessing they don't ask about the temperature. Overall the food is good. The meat here is a bit tougher than the United State. They are likely seasoned. The meal comes with grilled pepper, tomato and turkey blow bread.

This place was AMAZING…read more After a very long chill and drink sesh at another establishment in the area, bae and I were hungry and tryna chow down on some turkish grub. This place was in the vicinity and decent according to trip advisor AND open late. The restaurant is gigantic. I'm not an expert on average restaurant sizes in Turkey but this is one of the biggest restaurants I've ever seen. It has like 5 levels and is decorated impeccably. Impeccable as a synonym for weird. We were kindly seated in this, I'm not joking, like library on the roof. I literally took panoramic snapchats with the caption "this is literally where we are eating dinner". We sat on the couch in the library and the food was placed on a coffee-table like structure in front of us. We went with hookah of course, because 6 hours of hookah prior to our arrival was clearly inadequate. The staff were impressively attentive to our coals and came to check up on them every 30 min or so. If you know us, it won't be surprising that we literally ordered the entire menu. We got boreka-like spinach and cheese SPRING ROLLS (wtf?), spinach and cheese pastry thing, hummus (OBVIOUSLY), zucchini fritters, meat-ravioli in a cream sauce, and pita bread (OBVIOUSLY). Everything was absolutely spectacular. We ate way more food than is probably recommended for health/safety reasons but it was worth it. The staff was absolutely incredible with how much attention they gave us. Because we were off in a colony on mars practically, we had no idea that the restaurant had pretty much closed down in the floors below. This abruptly came to my attention when I drunkenly attempted to search for the bathroom. Our waiter additionally went out of his way to flag our cab down on our way out. Amazing hospitality in this place. Anyways, this was honestly one of my best experiences in a restaurant to date. Highly recommend.

Good food and service. On the pricier side. Great outdoor ambiance. Make sure to poke your head…read moreinside to see all of the lights. It's super cute inside.

After reading some reviews from various places on where to go in the spice bazaar, the name…read moreArifoglu came up a few times. So I made some notes on what I wanted to buy, how much I can get it in the states, and prices in various sizes. When I went to the spice bazaar I took mental note of what prices they had of various spices and what they were selling them for, as one place had one Sumac for 10TL more for a half a kg then Arifoglu had for a whole kg. So after looking around for a while I stopped in Arifoglu, they man with glasses helped me and he was super nice. He saw my list and asked to see it so I gave it to him. He beat all the prices on my sheet, as well as giving me 10% off everything too. Since I also bought about 3 lbs of spices he threw in something for me too. I bought some saffron from him as well. It was funny because I bought some Iranian saffron, and I brought a sample from home to make sure it was the same stuff since I'm not a spice savant that can tell the difference between the real and real looking fake stuff. He was impressed and give me another discount off the top. It was still al little more than you can get it in the US if you know where to go. But I figured I give it a try. I mentioned Turkish saffron as gift for friends who didn't cook who wanted it. And he scoffed and said Turkish saffron is stuff other places they sell to tourist who don't know better. I thought it was funny that he admitted that. Not only would I come back here if I needed spice and was back in Istanbul. I stopped in again before I left to pick up a few other things I decided to bring back.

Ignore all the other vendors trying to get you in to their stores as you walk through the Spice…read moreBazaar and head straight here. They don't hassle people to come in because they don't need to. They have a great variety of spices & herbs at great prices. But what drew me in was the big sign I thought was kind of funny: "mysterious scent of harem"... I had to investigate. I'm glad I went in, a whole wall is dedicated to their selection of perfumed and essential oils... It was amazing. I wish I bought more!