CLOSED: Cigkofteci Orbay

You better take your GPS with you to find this one, because none of the streets are marked with signs.

The stand is unmarked and easy to miss. Orbay quit and he doesn't work there anymore, but the food stall is up and running and the food is just f****** awesome.

For 5 euros we bought a whole package that could easy stuff 3 people. The dish is extremly spicy, consider that the spicy sauce - dressing feels sweet and saucy compared to the dish itself. You get plenty of wraps and salad with it.

It's in the dead center of the city, 550m from Taksim square. Open throughout most of the day and night.

Go stuff your self silly with seriously tasty and spicy food whenever your touristing around istanbul.

Orbay Usta Cigkofteci is alive and well and open for business up the street from its old location. Orbay said he didn't know about Happy Cow and wondered why so many people were going to the old address. He said he would have his son look up this site. I believe the address currently listed is correct. If you have trouble, though, just ask. The first person we asked knew where to direct us. The second person we asked turned out to be Orbay himself.

This restaurant is actually a a stand serving cigkofte (chee-koef-teh) which is a dish normally made with lamb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chee_kufta), but which in this case is made with nuts (etsiz = "without meat"). We were assured no animal products were used at all. It's served either as a wrap or as a salad. We ordered both and thought both delicious, particularly the tangy sauce that comes with it. We also ordered orange juice, which was squeezed for us right there. Very reasonably priced. We were charged 13 lira which at the moment is about 7.80USD.

You can take it with you, but if you want a place to sit there is one plastic table with two chairs The stand is out on the street of a covered pedestrian market. The Orbay is very friendly and the market a lot of fun to watch. We went twice and sat both times. It's not fine dining, but very pleasant.

We trekked to visit this outlet and were disappointed to find it's basically a hole in the wall style kabin selling fruit and veg, no seating of any kind. Save yourself the effort and head for the Salad Station if you want vegan food in a hurry. Deserves zero rather than the minimum of 2 stars I've been forced to give it by the site.