Istanbul from a Kid’s Point of View

10 things Alex enjoyed at ages 12 and 13.

My wife and I told Alex, age 12, that for this school year, “the world is going to be your learning lab.”  We promised to teach him the basics of seventh-grade learning, and let him try an online school as well as Turkish school if we found an acceptable one. One of his regular assignments in our home or world school was to write up what he was seeing and doing.

“The first thing I noticed when we got to Istanbul is that the Turks don’t speak much English. That presented a challenge,” he wrote. “Thankfully, we have a Turkish phrasebook, and we communicate with our hands and by acting things out like putting our hand to our mouths as if we’re dishing up food, to communicate ‘Where can I get something to eat?’ ”

“For dinner the first night on the Istiklal Caddesi, the grand avenue of the city, we found a cafeteria and ordered rice, mash potatoes, beef stew, tomato soup with meatballs, some kind of noodle pie, and a flan or custard. I like the Turkish food,” he said.

“Luckily, enough people speak English that we can usually find someone who understands us.”

Looking back, I can’t help but wonder if his constant exposure to foreign food for seven years was one of the reasons that Alex has become a chef, and is very interested in the culture of food. He loved to try out different restaurants in Istanbul. At the Asitane Restaurant, he got to sample fine Ottoman cuisine going back to 1469, dates of the original recipes culled from the