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• What A Disapointment

As one of the only truly vegetarian restaurants in Istanbul, I was super excited to eat here. My first attempt on a Sunday found them closed at dinnertime. There was no sign or hours in the window so I was at a loss. My second attempt was on a Monday for lunch. Again, closed. I am not sure why, but I went for a third. I tried for dinner on Tuesday and found them open. I think the universe had been trying to send me a message. Lesson learned, universe. Lesson learned. I sat down and upon looking at the menu was super excited. The menu clearly marked items that were vegan or could be made vegan. I was already planning my second visit before I had even ordered my food. There were so many great options to choose from. I decided on the special as it was a little bit of everything. It arrived and was huge. But disappointing. It was really salty. In fact, that was kind of all the flavor there was. The fried dough pockets were good, but a bit greasy and in the end, I just could not bring myself to eat much of it. All the items were just overly salted. I don't know if this was an anomaly, but it brought my thoughts of a second meal there to an end. In the end it was one of the worst meals of three weeks of travel. I decided to go for broke and try dessert and I will say the vegan brownie was an absolute delight and I was glad to walk out of there with that as the taste in my mouth. The other thing that was unfortunate is that the clientele and staff seemed to all be chain smokers. While they went outside to do so, it is a small narrow restaurant and the smoke all just wafted in and I could literally taste it in my mouth as I ate. I am not one to really be bothered by smoke so you can imagine that it was pretty bad for me to be affected. I was really disappointed all around.