Guest Writer By Mehmet Özbakır, Guest Writer
In Gaziantep, Turkey, the day starts with soup. Not a light starter, but beyran: lamb neck simmered for hours, rice, crushed garlic and red pepper, served boiling hot in a copper bowl. People from Antep, as we call ourselves, eat it before eight in the morning, sometimes at six, with flatbread and a glass of black tea. If you want to understand this city in south-eastern Türkiye, start there. Food in Gaziantep is not a weekend treat; it is a way of living that has been worked out over centuries and is still followed every day.
I live and work in this city. What follows is not a list of restaurants but what we eat, when we eat it, and where you can see it for yourself.
Table of Contents
- Why UNESCO Chose Gaziantep
- Morning: Beyran, Katmer, and Grilled Liver
- Antep Pistachios: The Autumn Harvest
- Baklava: Forty Layers and How to Eat It
- The Old-Town Route: from The Coppersmiths’ Bazaar to Zeugma
- Practical Notes
Why UNESCO Chose Gaziantep
In 2015 UNESCO added Gaziantep to its Creative Cities Network for gastronomy. The reason was not one famous dish but the depth of everyday cooking: hundreds of recipes still made at home, ingredients grown around the city, and knowledge handed down from mother to daughter. Gaziantep sits where Anatolia meets Mesopotamia, on the old trade road between Aleppo and central Anatolia. Spices, ways of cooking lamb, dried fruit in savory dishes: all of it meets here. If you want a short introduction to the city before you go, I keep a page about Gaziantep.
Morning: Beyran, Katmer, and Grilled Liver
Breakfast in Gaziantep has three faces. The first is the beyran I have already described; beyran shops open before dawn and usually close before noon because the pot is empty.
The second is katmer: dough stretched paper-thin, filled with crushed pistachios, kaymak (thick clotted cream) and sugar, then baked until crisp and cut into squares. Katmer is the breakfast of special days. By tradition, newly married couples are brought katmer on the first morning after the wedding.
The third surprises many visitors: grilled lamb liver. Small pieces are skewered, cooked over charcoal and eaten early with onion, parsley and thin bread warmed on the same grill. Around the old bazaar, the smoke of the liver grills is already rising at seven.
Antep Pistachios: The Autumn Harvest
Pistachios are to Gaziantep what grapes are to Burgundy. Orchards surround the city, and the trees grow in stony ground where little else would. The pistachio tree is patient: it takes years to bear fruit, and the crop alternates, one heavy year followed by a light one.
The main harvest is in September. Families go out to the orchards, the red hulls of the fresh nuts are removed, and the nuts are dried on rooftops and in courtyards. For those weeks the villages around the city smell of fresh pistachios. There is also an early summer harvest, when the kernels are still young and deep green. These young pistachios, which we call boz fıstık, are picked especially for baklava because of their bright colour and sharp aroma.
In the market, pistachios are sold in many grades: in the shell, shelled, roasted, coarsely crushed for baklava or finely ground for katmer. A good seller will ask you to taste before you buy.
Baklava: Forty Layers and How to Eat It
Gaziantep baklava is made from dough rolled as thin as fine cloth, usually forty layers, brushed with clarified butter between the sheets, filled with crushed pistachios, baked and then soaked in hot syrup. What sets it apart is the generous amount of pistachio, pure butter and a syrup that is not too sweet. In 2013 Antep baklava became the first product from Türkiye to receive geographical-indication protection from the European Union.
There is a way to eat it. People here turn the piece upside down so that the pistachio side touches the tongue first, then eat it in one or two bites. Good baklava crackles when you turn it. It is eaten with a glass of water or unsweetened tea, never with a sweet coffee. And it is eaten fresh: respected baklava houses make it every morning and do not sell yesterday’s trays.
The oldest baklava houses in the city date back to the late nineteenth century and are still run by the same families. In places like these you can watch the kitchen through glass: dough thrown and rolled on marble tables, pistachios scattered by hand. And do not leave without trying the city’s other sweet, lokum, rolled by hand around whole pistachios.
The Old-Town Route: from The Coppersmiths’ Bazaar to Zeugma
Everything above can be found on a single half-day walk.
Start at Gaziantep Castle on its hill, then walk down to Bakırcılar Çarşısı, the coppersmiths’ bazaar. Hammers still ring on copper here from early morning. Beyran bowls, baklava trays and coffee pots are all made by hand in small workshops. A few steps away stands Zincirli Bedesten, an eighteenth-century covered market now full of butchers and spice sellers.
Continue to Almacı Pazarı, the market for spices and dried goods. Strings of aubergines and peppers dried in the summer sun hang in front of the shops; in winter they are soaked, stuffed with rice and meat, and cooked. Here you will also find Antep red pepper paste, sumac and pistachios in every form.
Stop at an old coffee house near the market for menengiç kahvesi, a drink made from roasted and ground terebinth berries, served with milk. It tastes nothing like coffee, but this was the region’s own “coffee” long before coffee beans arrived.
End the route at the Zeugma Mosaic Museum, one of the largest mosaic museums in the world. Its mosaics were lifted from the Roman city of Zeugma on the Euphrates before the area was flooded by a dam. The most famous piece is the face of a young woman known as the Gypsy Girl; her gaze follows you wherever you stand. From the museum, the baklava houses in the centre are a few minutes’ drive away, which is the right way to finish.
If you have time left, the Emine Göğüş Culinary Museum, set in an old stone house, explains Antep cooking from ingredient to table.
Practical Notes
Gaziantep has an airport about an hour and a half by air from Istanbul. Three days are enough for the city and a visit to a pistachio orchard. The best time is September to October, during the pistachio harvest and when the heat has eased, or April to May.
Beyran is a morning dish only; arrive before nine. Baklava is bought to be eaten the same day; for the journey home, ask for travel packaging and keep it cool. Pistachios in the shell keep longer and travel better than shelled ones.
People in Antep are happy when guests ask about food. Ask someone what they ate today, and you will get a long answer, and quite possibly an invitation.
About the Author
Mehmet Özbakır lives and works in Gaziantep, Türkiye. He runs Antep Foods, a chocolate and confectionery manufacturer in the city. The factory has exported since 2002, and the Antep Foods brand was founded in 2025. He writes about the food and culture of south-eastern Anatolia.
