Antalya for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Antalya's restaurant scene splits along a coastline. Inside the Kaleiçi walls, tavernas and stone-walled meyhanes serve Ottoman-era classics on lanes barely wide enough for two people to pass; out along Lara Caddesi and the Fener seafront, hotel dining rooms and standalone kitchens work with the sea in view and menus that swing from Aegean fish to Tokyo-style sushi. Between them, the working neighbourhoods of Muratpaşa and Konyaaltı hold the places locals eat on a Tuesday: kebap counters that open at breakfast, dessert parlours that stay lit until midnight, sushi rooms that opened for the Russian-speaking families now living west of the airport. This list is twelve restaurants pulled from that spread, ranked, addressed, and cited. It is aimed at the traveller who wants to eat where the cooking has a point of view rather than where the tour bus stops, and it favours kitchens that keep unusual hours, hold a specific cuisine, or occupy an address worth walking to on its own.