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Istanbul welcomed me into its vast embrace early one morning. Arriving from the East by train into Haydarpaşa Station, I had my feet in Asia and the Bosphorus and Europe in front of me. The ‘City of Cities’ was all around me. For those who love travel, Istanbul is Byzantium; ancient and yet ultra-modern, imposing and incredibly endearing. ‘Are you lost? We will come with you. Are you curious? Come and explore.’ The food is like the city: endless, generous, varied and festive. There is as much to see in the former Constantinople as there is to discover in its food – and that’s a lot. The city’s dishes are so diverse, surprising and refined that if you are new to Istanbul, you might wonder how you could have overlooked it for so long. Eating there is like putting together a beautiful mosaic because Ottoman cuisine is a vast gastronomic culture that spans epochs and influences from Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Mediterranean – it evokes journeys, histories and peoples. There is the food of the street: rich and frankly addictive; the food served in homes and cafés: simple, healthy and fresh. The contemporary cuisine is elegant and attractive – the good that comes when the new appropriates the old. And this sums up Istanbul: a crossroads, a diversity of styles, cultures and rituals. It is Europe and Asia, the sea and the land, a megalopolis and individual neighbourhoods, tradition and the new, Turkish, Greek, Jewish, Armenian and Kurdish neighbourhoods, secular here, religious there. Little lanes in the bazaar and, just opposite, the wide and busy İstiklâl Caddesi. Istanbul is a simit food cart and a rakı (anise-flavoured spirit) apéritif on a terrace overlooking the Bosphorus, and in the middle and all around is the strait, the Golden Horn, the sea.