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The Pudding Shop on Divan
Yolu in Sultanahmet,
officially known as the
Lale Restaurant,
is directly opposite the Byzantine Hippodrome—where
it has been for half a century—and
a convenient place for breakfast,
lunch or dinner.
Print this page,
take it along, present it to your waiter,
and you can have free tea or
coffee after
your meal, courtesy
of TTP and the Lale's owners.
The Pudding Shop has all the virtues
of a good Turkish restaurant: pleasant
decor, experienced waiters, good food,
and an open kitchen so
you can see what's cooking and easily
choose what you'd like to eat.
The only problem with an open kitchen,
in my opinion, is that it all looks
so good you tend to "over-eat
with your eyes"—or
at least I do.
Not only that, but they have free
Wifi wireless Internet access,
good Tuborg lager on
draft (fiçi birasi),
and quite delicious strawberry
cheesecake.
So the Lale is convenient,
and open for all three meals every
day, and that might be enough for any
normal Istanbul restaurant.
But this is the Pudding Shop,
the most famous restaurant on the entire
Istanbul-to-Kathmandu Hippy
Trail of the 1960s.
I was there. I arrived in Istanbul in
1968, when the Hippodrome was parked
solid with Volkswagen microbuses heading
east. The Pudding Shop was
the most obvious place to grab a bite
to eat, and its creamy sütlaç (milk-and-rice
pudding) and other Turkish delights
were tasty, filling and cheap. (Read
all about Istanbul's Hippie years in Turkey:
Bright Sun, Strong Tea.)
The Pudding Shop soon
became the social and communications
center of the Hippy Trail,
its bulletin board sprouting layers
of leaves like a sycamore in spring.
The Lale's owner likes to tell the
story of one microbus driver who didn't
have enough seats for all the young
people who wanted to share the ride
to Kathmandu. He said "Here, take
a chair from the restaurant.
Drop it off on your way back through
Istanbul."
So you get a nice bit of history and
the romance of the open road when
you dine at the Lale Restaurant.
But—even more important—you
get good food well served at decent
prices.
By the way, the same people that has
owned the Lale since its establishment
in 1958—the Çolpan
family—owns the nearby Mavi
Ev (Blue House) Hotel,
with fabulous views of the Blue
Mosque. (When you're feeling flush,
you should din at the Mavi
Ev's rooftop
terrace restaurant with the
illuminated Blue Mosque looming magnificently
just across the street. That's when
there's no mistaking that you're
in Istanbul!)
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