Text 11627, 119 rader
Skriven 2014-03-30 19:19:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 410
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The Sky Fire restaurant occupies the top floor and boasts
being the first rooftop dining room and bar in the city -
kind of odd as the hotel is quite new, just a couple years
old, and the city is quite old. The much-vaunted view is
mostly of other hotels, with the sea in the background: I
suppose that in sunny weather it's pretty nice, and on hot
days the breeze would be welcome.

Breakfast there is a buffet with I believe the option of
a la carte ordering, which we didn't pursue. This is mostly
of your worldwide standard hotel items, mostly tasty and of
good quality:

croissants, muffins, and similar pastries, along with
regular European-style breads for the unadventurous;

deli items - salami, olives, and assorted local cheeses;

an egg product that I didn't even look at; potatoes ditto;

"sausages" - teeny weenies made of poultry (this being a
Muslim country with growing tendencies in that direction),
in tomato sauce a l'anglaise, which I tasted just to confirm
my guess that they were unpalatable, which they were;

an assortment of beverages of the usual sort, except that
the juices included cherry juice (like the fluid inside
canned cherries), and the orange was of a local variety and
rather bitter and very aromatic.

There were also a few local things to amuse me - smoked
fishy things including trout and salmon (both cold and
hot smoked) and a "fermented beef sausage," a sour dried
substance that I couldn't quite place, almost merguez-like;
also the expected bastirma. A couple pastries that were
supposed to be unique to the town - I forget their names but 
remember principally that if I ever see them again I should
refuse them, politely of course.

[Later found a note to myself: boyoz - not sure if that was
the baked good that was like a stone or the one that was
like a wrung-out Handi-Wipe, but I suspect the latter.]

Our waitress was charming, and we promised her we'd be back
to check out dinner not that night but the next.

Another day of wandering around town, including Konak Pier,
where Lilli had a lead on the Turkish towels she wanted to
buy (couldn't find them after all), assorted snacking,
modest because of the substantial breakfast, and after
siesta and drinks, back to Alsancak to see what it looked
like in the dark (to me, nothing).

There's a beer street, 12 hundred something Sokak. The
streets are officially numbered, with several in a row in
consecutive order, then a skip, or else the next one is
in a different direction to the others, not very helpful
at all. We found several streets of taverns and were not
certain if we ever found the famous one. All the places
were chockfull and very noisy, some compounding the issue
with singers or guitar players of greater or lesser talent
but all of greater volume. Beers are all the same price
at all the places. We decided to forgo these pleasures and
take a quiet walk back down the waterfront, as we'd not been
to this part of it. It's both better kept than the part
near the center of Konak and seemingly a happier place.
Sculptures and monuments, mostly as far as I could tell to
Ataturk.

We walked until the crowds started thinning and our stomachs
started rumbling, and we stopped by a restaurant whose owner
had accosted us on a previous stroll in the neighborhood.
His menu had looked kind of okay, the prices maybe 10-15%
less than the neighbors', so we told him we might be back
later. The awning facing the sea said Meyhane, so I
remembered that. When we walked in, he indeed recognized us
and made this minor fuss to his staff in a way that seemed
to say to our eyes, treat these guys well, but that had that
undertone of, and charge the suckers extra. Fine, I'm used
to paying a modest tourist tax.

I'd hoped that Lilli would get some delicious grilled thing
or kofte (meatballs) or kebabs, but all of a sudden her
tummy didn't want any of that, and she ordered a fruit plate
instead - this was a bigger portion of what you'd see on the
airplane (maybe she was nostalgic for the friendly skies
already?) and of only somewhat better quality, $4.50.

I might have ordered some fish, as but for the warmth-
preserving plastic sheeting I could have thrown a baseball
into the Aegean from where we were, but the word Patlicani
just jumped right out at me, and who doesn't love Patlican?
So I ordered the meyhane pilav. This was a peculiar ricelike
grain (I'm really not sure what it was, maybe a relative of
regular rice milled in such a way as the grains are broken
in half) cooked in lamb broth and with substantial doses of
lamb shoulder meat, eggplant (Patlican), and mushrooms. The
seasonings: mint, garlic, and a substantial dose of hot
pepper that gave me additional respect for the tastebuds of
the Turks. The serving could have been a double one - it
was the size of my laptop, which is mostly metal and weighs
2 kg; so I figure this heap of goodness was almost a kilo.

We were not rushed, even though by the time we left we were
definitely in the rearguard.

The bill was high for this town but not for the fashionable
seaside neighborhood: some huge sum like $30 for both of us
with beer and a couple glasses of wine including a nice tip.
It had in fact been completely accurate.

I later discovered that Meyhane is a generic word for tavern
- some frantic digging on the Internet revealed that the
real name of the place was or had been at some date Kordon
Ocakbasi.

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