What's the food culture in Antalya?

Antalya's food culture has one non-negotiable test. If a restaurant serves piyaz, the city's signature white-bean salad dressed in tahini, lemon, and parsley, order it before anything else. The version at Parlak Restaurant on Kazım Özalp Caddesi comes with a slick of red pepper oil on top and enough tahini to coat the back of a spoon. Locals eat piyaz alongside şiş köfte, small hand-shaped lamb patties grilled over hardwood charcoal until the fat renders and the outside chars black. The pair arrives on most menus for 250-350 TRY ($5-7). Skip any place that serves the salad with ketchup or mayonnaise. The real thing tastes nutty, sharp from fresh lemon, and the beans hold their shape rather than dissolving into paste.

Turkish breakfast in Antalya takes 90 minutes if you do it properly. The spread at Çakırlar köy kahvaltısı, a cluster of farm-breakfast restaurants about 12 km west of the center near Konyaaltı, runs to 20-25 small plates. Expect warm flatbread pulled from a wood-fired sac, three or four local cheeses including tulum aged in goatskin, thick kaymak clotted cream, eggs scrambled with tomato and green pepper in a copper menemen pan, and honey still on the comb. The whole table costs 300-500 TRY ($6-10) per person. Worth noting, these places fill by 10:30am on weekends. The bread arrives slightly smoky and warm enough to melt the kaymak on contact. You tear it by hand.

For street-level eating, walk the alleys behind Kaleiçi's harbor rather than the harbor-front restaurants themselves, which charge 2-3x for the same grilled sea bass. The Kapalı Çarşı along Uzun Çarşı Sokak sells lokum by weight at 80-150 TRY per box, but the better find is the small stalls pressing fresh nar suyu (pomegranate juice) for 40-50 TRY a glass. The pomegranates grow within Antalya province and the juice runs tart and cold enough to sting your teeth. At night, döner and kokoreç carts along Şarampol Caddesi serve until 2am. Kokoreç is lamb intestines chopped on a flat griddle with tomatoes and green peppers, then stuffed into half a bread loaf for about 100-120 TRY. The smell of rendered fat and charred bread carries a full block down the street.

Dinner runs late, 8:30-9pm for locals. The fish restaurants worth your time sit along the Konyaaltı strip or in the Lara district rather than the Kaleiçi waterfront. Fish is weighed before grilling, typically levrek (sea bass) or çipura (sea bream), at 400-600 TRY per kilogram. It arrives whole, skin blistered and salted, with a side of rocket salad dressed in pomegranate molasses. Mind you, menus at sit-down restaurants near Hadrian's Gate often have English translations, but the smaller lokantas in Muratpaşa and Kepez districts might not. Point at the steel trays behind the glass counter. These home-style lokantas serve pre-cooked dishes like kuru fasulye (white bean stew), etli yaprak sarma (meat-stuffed grape leaves), and İskender-style kebab with tomato butter for 150-250 TRY.

The biggest trap in Antalya is the touts outside Kaleiçi restaurants who promise a special menu. That special menu is the tourist menu at 2-3x lokanta prices. Walk past and look for places where taxi drivers and construction workers sit at plastic tables eating midday plates. The restaurants near Düden Waterfalls look scenic but charge resort prices for average grilled meat. If someone quotes a price before you sit down, keep walking. Genuine lokantas display prices on a board above the counter or printed on the wall. Reservations are rarely needed except at Konyaaltı beachfront fish restaurants on Friday and Saturday nights, and most sit-down places accept cards now, though the smaller carts and bakeries still prefer cash in Turkish lira.