After a less-than-satisfying run of local food for the past ten days, we decided to get ourselves some "western" food for lunch for a change today. If there's a place to do it in Istanbul, it's Taksim Square as the popular city square is full of dining options when it comes to international cuisine.
We ended up sitting down at Kitchenette, a diner serving international comfort food (think pasta, pizza, burger and fries!) at Taksim Square next to the historic Marmara Hotel.
Traditional Fish and Chips on a platter never smells so good (that's what happens after ten straight days of crappy food)! The sea bass fillet deep-fried with a light batter was accompanied by some crispy French fries and three different dipping sauces (tartar sauce, green pea aioli and honey). Pretty nice.
Chicken wings with potato wedges weren't bad either.
The calamari was a little bland to tell you the truth but hey, it's still better than any local food we had the last few days.
Food Rating: 5/10
Price: €€
Address: Gümüşsuyu Mahallesi, Tak-ı Zafer Cd. No:3, 34437 Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Turkey
Closest Metro Station: Taksim
Tel: +90 212 292-6862
Website: www.kitchenette.com.tr
After spending 10 days in Turkey, I was still puzzled with their hotel ranking system. So does 5 star really mean the best or the worst?
This night, we arrived at yet another 5 starred hotel, Buyuk Anadolu. The exterior looked decent but definitely not 5 star material. Maybe 3 star at best.
The hotel was huge like a shopping mall or commercial building so they even had security guards there to patrol the premise.
It was not short on facilities, that's for sure. There were things like internet room (with pentium computers), table tennis room, snooker room and chess room. Not bad.
When we finally had time to check out our hotel room, we were hugely disappointed.
How could parts of the toilets still look unfinished? For instance, the sink still had rough edges which were not smoothed out and the bathtub was leaky. The balcony door also failed to lock properly which got us worried the whole night. Good thing that, we were leaving the hotel at 5am the next morning so our stay would be a very brief one.
I thought our friends summed this up pretty nicely, "It's like someone has come to build a huge hotel here with all the facilities and left when it's unfinished. And NO ONE bothered to give it some proper maintenance. After a while, it looks like this.". Well said.
Rating: ❤
Price: €€
Address: Büğdüz Mahallesi, Anadolu Otel İç Yolu, 06750 Akyurt/Ankara, Turkey
Tel: +90 312 841-6464
