Hocapasa Pidecisi

The district of Hocapaşa, in Sirkeci (just down the hill from Sultanahmet) provides a veritable cornucopia of excellent food choices and the Pidecisi is just one. A Pide is a piece of fresh rolled dough topped with your choice of ingredients, usually including cheese. Something like a Turkish pizza, in the shape of a row-boat. The pie is slid on a large wooden paddle into a stone oven and baked at high temperatures for about 4 minutes until golden-crispy.

Toppings include a variety of veggies as well as sucuk (dried garlic sausage) and pastirma (pastrami) as well as finely chopped roasted beer called kiyma. These cheese used is called kaşar, which is a very mild yellow cheese with a high fat content which makes it melt better on top of the crust.

The pide is also very large as you can see in this photo just half of the thing is on my plate while the other half is about to be greedily consumed by my Lunch Buddy. —>

9tl got us this cheese pide with a plate of complimentary pickles and two teas. Meats and other extra toppings raise the price a bit more.. though if you share it the cost is very reasonable.