The Ottoman Empire encompassing as it once did Eastern Europe, Europe, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, the Levant, Iraq, Arabia, Egypt, and the rest of North Africa as far west as Morocco evolved a cuisine that reflects a huge array of diverse influences. Added to these culinary influences were the nomadic cooking traditions the Turks picked up as they migrated from the Far East through Central Asia and the Caucasus arriving in Anatolia beginning in the late eleventh century.

Without a doubt food occupies a much higher place in the Turkish scale of values than it does in many other cultures. Restaurants are one of the best-run institutions in our country. They are excellent because we demand food and service of very high standards. This is true at every level in both public and private life. Indeed, a young woman traditionally has not been considered marriageable until she could prepare a simple rice pilav and Turkish coffee properly (and in the rural areas prove that she could spin and weave).

At the government level it has always been state policy, whether under the Sultan or the Vizier, that food should be plentiful and cheap for the populace. Even in our most difficult economic and political times we have had food markets overflowing with vegetables, fruit, meats, chickens.

Rather than being a recent imported Western tradition, restaurants are an old and central feature of Turkish life. We have always loved to dine out. Men of all classes typically gather nightly with friends in restaurants to while the evening away with endless meze (appetizers), and raki (our national drink, that is anisette and grapes distilled with 45 percent alcohol, thus it is 90 proof)

Eating out in our culture, for most cases is not just to feed ourselves, yet it is a social occasion and pretty much a ritual to be enjoyed.