Foreword by Josceline Dimbleby

When I was barely twenty I arrived for the first time in Istanbul, after the long journey from Paris on the original Orient Express. It was only on boarding this historic train, for one of its last trips, that we learned that the restaurant car had already been taken off. So after eating nothing but platform sandwiches for three days my girlfriend and I, starving, rushed to the one address we knew, the Pera Palas Hotel, and ate our first Turkish meal completely alone in the palatial dining-room. The yalancı dolma - stuffed vine leaves so different from those I had known at London’s Mediterranean restaurants - were made with rice which had a bite to it, and were flecked with pine kernels and fresh dill.