Name: Meydan Lokantası
Address: Ertuğrul, Hatuniye Cd. 6/a, Bergama, İzmir, 35700, TR
Telephone: (0232) 632 11 21
Price range: €€
Rating: 4.2

Türkiye

Turkey

Izmir

Meydan Lokantası

Beef tripe boiled for hours until tender, cut into strips and served in its own milky broth, thickened with a roux and an egg-and-lemon liaison, and finished at the table with garlic vinegar and butter red with pepper: işkembe çorbası is the soup Türkiye drinks at three in the morning, and the işkembeci that serves it is a fixture of every town. It is a cousin of the Balkan škembe čorba, the Greek patsás and the Romanian ciorbă de burtă, all descended from the Ottoman kitchen, and in Istanbul it has been the standard cure for a night of rakı for as long as anyone has written about it. The tripe is the rumen, the first stomach, honeycombed and white once cleaned; the soup has the reputation of a dish for the brave, but a good bowl is mild, rich and clean, and the condiments do the work of waking you up.

The tripe is scalded, scraped and washed repeatedly, then boiled in a large pot of water with an onion and a little salt for three to four hours, skimmed, until it can be cut with a spoon; a pressure cooker shortens this and most shops use one. It is cooled, cut into thin strips or small squares, and returned to the strained broth. The thickening is a light roux of butter and flour whisked into the broth, which turns it white and gives it body, and in the terbiyeli version a mixture of egg yolk and lemon juice tempered with hot broth is whisked in off the boil so it does not curdle. Some kitchens add milk. The soup simmers a few minutes more and is seasoned with salt; everything else, crushed garlic in vinegar, melted butter with pul biber or paprika, dried mint and extra lemon, sits on the table for each diner to add. Bread is the only side.

Judge the tripe first: it should be soft, slightly gelatinous and clean-smelling, in pieces big enough to notice, with no rubbery chew and no trace of the farmyard, which means it was washed and cooked properly. The broth should be white or pale yellow, smooth and glossy, with body from the roux but not pasty, and it should taste of beef and gentle sourness before the vinegar goes in. Mark down a thin, watery broth, a soup that tastes mainly of flour, tripe cut so small it vanishes, an ammoniac or barnyard smell, a terbiye that has curdled into threads, and a bowl served lukewarm. The condiments should be fresh: garlic crushed that day, butter poured hot. A proper işkembeci serves it in a deep bowl and refills the bread without being asked.

Tripe Soup

İşkembe çorbası

İşkembe çorbasının terbiyesi güzel, aşırı yoğun ve kokulu değil. İşkembe taneleri güzel pişmiş yumuşak, ebatları ince değil boyut güzel. İlk defa burada üzerine nane ekilerek geldiğini gördüm ama bozmamış. Tavsiye ederim.

Meydan Lokantası

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