Istanbul - S1.E1

Istanbul is the city that bridges Europe and Asia, but what does that mean for a traveller looking for great places to eat? On the European side of this city, you can sit on a tiny table by the water’s edge and eat simply grilled fish and take tea from a passing cart. Catch the ferry to the Asian side and you'll eat seasonal village food - loquats stuffed with cumin-spiced meatballs and little plates of perfect meze. In Istanbul's backstreets, a local food blogger helps Ainsley discover the world of “esnaf lokantası”, simple workers’ cafes. The menus here might never change, but that doesn’t stop Ainsley from cooking his own spicy version of the local kofta kebab.

After making a classic fattoush salad to go with a roasted sheep head and accidentally getting caught up in a noisy football crowd that became a tear-gas fuelled riot, Ainsley heads off to find the mysterious çiğ köfte (a raw meat dish) that's banned from the streets in it’s original form. Upon tracking some down, Ainsley discovers the chef is probably more dangerous than the kofta!