On every visit to Istanbul, I make time to have Iskender kebap at Han Restaurant. A simple but decadent concept with origins dating back to the late 19th century, the kebap is sliced doner meat spread over toasted pita pieces, covered with tomato sauce and then slathered with melted butter, typically at the moment of serving. Yogurt is common; I always get it on the side. Some people (typically hyperbolic tour guides) claim the meal is named for Alexander the Great (Iskender is the Turkish variant of Alexander) but it is actually the name of the family that created it in Bursa many decades ago. Now the purview of specialty restaurants across the country and a fixture at many kebab and meat joints, Iskender has always been one of my favorite dishes and the one at Han holds a special place in my gastronomic heart.
The annual tradition serves as more than just a good meal. It is a remembrance of my uncle, my father’s brother. For years, Iskender would be our meal, our tradition, something we would always carve out time for. While neither of us are particularly laconic, we are not talkative either, so the meals would pass in a comfortable silence interspersed with comfortable conversation. It was one of my most important moments of any visit to Turkey.
My uncle passed in 2019 but the tradition continues. Usually I go with my cousin but this year I ate my Iskender on my own. It is interesting how the significance of a meal increases your familiarity with it – even if you have it only once a year. I could tell that Han, like many restaurants, was adapting in the face of an ongoing and long-standing fiscal and inflation crisis in Turkey. The meal was more expensive, and yet with more pita and less meat than in prior years. Nevertheless it was delicious and gave me a space of peace and tranquility to honor and remember my uncle.
It is unsurprising that food can linger long in the memory and spark emotional connection. It is a dance with our senses and so often tied to an experience or an event or a person or some other entity that has spiritual resonance. Despite being what can be both pejoratively and admirably called a “foodie,” I find that an excellent meal on its own, no matter how transcendent, is rarely one that lingers in memory. It is the experience that remains. The chili crab I had in Singapore? Truly amazing but as time goes by I remember it more for the confusion of the staff when I showed up with a suitcase (I was on my way to the airport) and the unholy mess I made while devouring it. The tuna jaw I had in Osaka was an unexpected delight. But when I think of it I can’t help but think of how I visited the food market in the middle of the day… playing hooky on a work trip to Japan (and letting everyone know I was playing hooky because, look, will I ever be back in Osaka and I’m going to experience its food no matter what).
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I am not a fan of birthdays. But growing up, after I had outgrown birthday parties, my birthday did come with the distinct pleasure of choosing a restaurant. There were two places I chose and I remember them as paragons of culinary excellence, though the standards of a child and young adult may be more suspect than those of my current refined or, some may say, precious self. The Mongolian BBQ place on Military Highway remains the ideal manifestation of that cuisine, whose appellation is just as misleading as Holy Roman Empire given it is neither Mongolian nor BBQ. Those frozen rolls of meat, the generous selection of veggies, and the dozens of sauce components. Aside from the bread (uncommon in Asian restaurants and unlike any other bread I have had), the sauces are what lingers in my memory. Not the flavor but the spectacle. They weren’t pre-made fabrications like teriyaki but components: oyster sauce, ginger water, garlic, etc. all in their own pots with their own ladles. I pitied the neophyte who tried to add the sauces themselves as really you let the cook take care of it. His muscle memory let him work at light speed, putting everything into your bowl in a blur of action, with no regard at all for all of the splashing that was happening. This restaurant, whose name I only remember as Mongolian BBQ, is the one that I wish I could revisit again to reconstruct the experience: the sauces, the flavors, the bread, the paper placemats with the Chinese zodiac, the exotic thrill of 1990s globalization where immigrants and their children could dine on the cuisine of other immigrants and their children in the bowels of suburbia.
Another prime example of the gluttony of 1990s and early 2000s capitalism was the ubiquity of inexpensive, all-you-can-eat establishments. While these still exist, it doesn’t seem to this eater at least that the allure is the same as it was for the Golden Corrals of my youth and the Indian lunch buffets of my young adulthood let alone corollaries like the endless breadsticks at Olive Garden. One such place holds a special place in my memory: Dynasty, with all-you-can-eat mongolian BBQ, Chinese buffet, sushi, and soft-serve in a huge but ramshackle banquet hall at the bottom of a ramshackle Ramada Inn off of the busy but forgettable Northampton Boulevard. In the waning days of high school and on every break from university, my friends and I would beeline to this most average of restaurants to gorge on an endless variety of foodstuffs while in good company.
My second birthday choice was a more sophisticated one. Over time, the draw of Mongolian BBQ lessened as its food changed its quality and its shape until the point where the place finally closed. In its place, the Bienville Grill was my choice. A small neighborhood joint serving Cajun cuisine, I still remember the deep disappointment I felt when I heard it was closing as the owners wished to focus on a second restaurant they managed, one that I thought was inferior and soon closed down itself. While I am an adventurous eater, I usually end up having the same meal each time at my regular spots (my local taco place knows my exact order, as they should given I have gone there for years after yoga every Monday). At Bienville Grill, it was crawfish etouffe. It remains unparalleled in my imagination and memory, as much because it is an uncommon dish. I wonder sometimes if it was really as good as I remember it to be but that’s not really the point, is it.
These are all examples of food outside of the home but for many people their strongest memories of food are concocted in a home kitchen. My knowledge of the Italian word for grandmother, nonna, is derived entirely from my interest in food – as it seems a nonna cannot be a nonna unless they have at least one special meal that takes hours to day to prepare (and also featured in a cookbook, a blog, or an Instagram post). Are nonna’s meatballs really the best… or do they taste better because you watched her stir the sauce for hours and hours while regaling you with stories? The flavor of food is so much more than what you put in the dish. It is the memories it evokes, the emotions it inspires, the experiences it creates. And so I say to you: live long and eat well!
