Hello again.

Hello again and welcome back to Happy Hour, today is our old segment, Global Village. In the studio today we have a new friend, a new guest speaker. Hi and welcome to the show, Deniz.

Hi, thank you for having me.

So Deniz, why don't we start with a little bit of self introduction？By the way, Deniz is from Turkey.

Sure, no problem. Hello everyone, I'm Deniz. I'm from Turkey. I'm 30 years old and I've been in Beijing for 10 years. Now I'm back in my country, but I will be going back soon.

When you say you're back in Turkey, exactly where are you right now？

I'm in Istanbul my hometown. I was born and raised there.

Okay! That's very good actually, I’d love to talk about Istanbul with you.

Sure.

Because you were born and raised in Istanbul, fascinating city, I have been there once. I was wondering how would you describe Istanbul？

It's really a beautiful city, like first of all, it's a metropolitan, quite huge, 20 million people almost. But the unique thing about Istanbul is it’s located on two different Continents, Europe and Asia. In between there's a sea called the Marmara Sea, it's called. . . this area, the sea area is called the Bosporus. The strait there that goes through the city is actually quite famous. So it's quite a beautiful city. You can see the sea from almost everywhere.

We grew up learning geography and then hearing all these words. Since a very young age started dreaming about these beautiful places in the world. And that is, Istanbul is very unique because this is a city over two different Continents, right?

Definitely, very unique in that sense.

And how does this unique feature actually influence people's lifestyle and mentality, would you say?

That's a good question. So I think it's not only about two different continents, it's three different continents. Because before Turkey, there was the ultimate empire. And the ultimate empire had lands in three different continents. At the time Istanbul was the capital, so it was the center for all their culture, science, art, whatever.

They would bring all sorts of different traditions, customs, arts, foods, whatever, and from all over their empire to Istanbul. So it is really like a melting pot Istanbul. Right now, there are two big influences.

This would be Europe and Asia and like Middle East. People have different opinions, ideas, whatever, but they all live in the same place. This is very like unique for Istanbul.

Since, like you were saying, Istanbul, well, historically it has always been like a melting pot where different cultures came to meet, to gather, and to basically co-exist, I mean, right at the moment, would you describe average Turkish people as more traditional or perhaps more internationally minded？

Most of Turkey and most people in Turkey, they are traditional, but Istanbul and a couple of other cities they are different because they have received influence from Europe so much over the years. So in Istanbul, we have more world citizens, people that care about world issues, they are more open minded, open to new experiences, but most people in Turkey they are traditional.

Which brings us to the next question, since you've been in Beijing for 10 years and you obviously sound like someone with global perspective. Do you notice that people like you, like young people like you that you have a different mindset if you have to compare yourself with older generation like your parents or even your grandparents generation？

Yeah, there's definitely a generational gap in Turkey because so much stuff happened so fast in Turkey over the years. The stuff that affects the subconscious of a society. So it changes the way we think about stuff. So there is definitely a generational gap between the generations.

With all these interactions of different cultures coming together coexist that has also influenced your food culture, hasn't it？There's a lot of fusion elements in Turkish food.

That's right. So for example, you might know that Turkey is famous for its meat dishes, its kebabs. However, there are other food items that are really famous in Turkey and that people think are from Turkey that actually come from central Asia, for example, yogurt has its roots in central Asia, which is where Turkish people immigrated from originally.

It's really prevalent in our food. There is a perfect example of how Turkish food is a fusion of different cuisines, Mediterranean cuisine, Arian cuisine, South Asian cuisine, European cuisine like West Europea and East European. Yeah, it's quite unique.

Even the spices, the way to eat food, all of these are sort of really much of a blend of all these cultures. So Deniz, could you walk us through like a typical day in food？So what do people usually eat like in Istanbule for example, what do people usually eat for breakfast and for lunch, for dinner？

Sure, no problem. So typical breakfast, it consists eggs, cheese is a huge deal in Turkey. Everyone loves and eats cheese every day almost, we have our own traditional national cheeses that you can't find anywhere else.

So eggs, cheese, bread, obviously, those are huge deal in Turkey, bread and something with olives or olive oil, olive oil is really like a cornerstone in the Turkish cuisine. We use it in all different meals like breakfast, diner, lunch, whatever, it doesn't matter.

I have noticed that.

We will always consume something with olive oil.

Yeah, this is very similar to Mediterranean food like the use of large quantity of olive oil.

It actually comes from like ancient Greece, Italy, like those cultures like after effect of those cultures presence in these like in this industry geography.

And do people generally have a big breakfast or because in some cultures right breakfast is just like an insignificant meal they have like a very small portion of something and grab a drink on the go and that was it. Do people in Turkey generally have a big breakfast？

Yes, an excellent question. So breakfast is a big deal in Turkey, very big deal. If you're undergo if you're very busy, you might have like a real quick breakfast on your way out and stuff. However, once a week on Sundays, you must have a big breakfast with your family or with your friends, whatever whoever you must have a big breakfast, last a couple of hours you can think of it like a brunch, like an extent that they have breakfast or brunch where this beautiful table will be set up which will have many different varieties of fruits, whatever and people will just sit and eat and talk and whatever.

I wanna kind of touch on the lunch and dinner real quick.

Sure.

Lunch is not a big deal. People just eat it because most people work, they eat it really quickly, they get done with it. It can be like a vegetable dish with rice or some maybe a little bit meat, but dinner is what's important in one day like the work day.

People who come home from work and either get their partners or by themselves they are prepared like a nice feast for themselves basically and eat and enjoy and that's how they distress from the day.

Very good description, but I'm a bit curious, do people in Turkey generally eat in the sort of the style that we are familiar with as a Chinese, because we share food. And obviously in Europe generally they don't share so you have your own portion of food, which one do you have?

We kind of have both. But generally you'll have like one big part of food and everyone will take that portion from it. So it's kind of like sharing. So we just make food for the whole family and the whole family enjoys from one source basically.

I do have an extra question here since based on my limited knowledge of Turkish food, you have a really vast cuisine because you have all these influences. But how are they feeling about foreign food like truly sort of, let's just say like, for example, all these international fast food, how do they feel about it？

So Turkey has been greatly influenced by the west when it comes to fast food. We do have like Mcdonald's, KFC, Burger King, it’s very prevalent here and people do consume them. It's not like they hate it, but it's not considered to be like the best of food.

We have so much variety of, like classical traditional turkish foods. It has its place in Turkey, but it's not considered to be great.

What about the attitude towards takeaways? You know in China, they're just so prevalent.

Yeah, that's what I did when I was in Beijing.

So many choices. Do people accept that？

Yeah, takeaway, I mean Meituan you have that just full of choices, actually excruciating, so hard to choose from.

Exactly.

Yeah. In Turkey, people do do takeaways, they do get them. But something very specific to Turkey is homemade food. 100% of the time we will prefer homemade food. This is something I know for myself, I know for my friends and my family.

If you can eat at home like a homemade cook meal, you will always have the homemade cooked meal, but this doesn't mean that there isn't any takeaway. There is so much takeaway actually, it's like dumbfounding, so many choices and they are all good. So we touched on fast food, Turkey has its own fast food.

Which is?

And we also have that as fast food here and they are delicious, don't get me wrong. So if you want to go that route, you can definitely go that route.

I don't know like a spit and then there's just huge amount of meat seasoned.

Yeah, that's right. You're absolutely right on that. So it's like you said spiced meat stuck on top of each other. It turns on a rotistery while it's receiving heat. And then when you want to eat it, the chef will cut thin slices of it, not chunks, thin slices.

They actually do call it yaprak döner which means leaf, it's as thin as a leaf. And then it will be served on.

Exactly.

In today’s Global Village episode, we talked to our new friend Deniz who is from Istabule about his city and about Turkish food. I know a lot of you love the topic of food. So next episode, we are gonna continue our talk to Deniz. We are gonna talk about Turkish deserts and many other intersting cultural topics.

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