I love good food and am familiar with most cuisines, but not with turkish food. What are typical dishes and what are your favorites? What ethnic food is it similar to?

I've heard Turkish described as one of the four great cuisines of the world (along with French, Chinese, and Indian). I tend to agree.<BR><BR>Doner Kebap: the meat is the same as a Greek gyro - chopped, seasoned lamb or chicken slowly roasted on a spit and served on Turkish bread. This is typical Turkish &quot;fast food&quot;, available from stands or shops like German Schnellimbiss or British Chippies.<BR><BR>Lots of other Kebaps, including Shish, which is just what you'd expect.<BR><BR>Turkish pizza is good; meat and tomato on a thick boat-shaped crust.<BR><BR>Best of all are the desserts: Turkish Delight and my favorite, BAKLAVA.<BR><BR>Lots of tomato, cucumber, melon. Be careful where you eat seafood.<BR><BR>

A bit like Greek (though neither side wants to hear that), a bit like many middle eastern foods, nice spices because Turkey was historically on the spice route. Some goodies include:<BR><BR>Dolmas (stuffed vegetables, including green peppers, or graphe leaves).<BR>Lots of ground lamb type things, with pinenuts, spices, etc.<BR>Pilafs.<BR>Lots of eggplant.<BR>Borek (dish layered with dough layers similar to phyllo).

Turkish food is very similar to Armenian food. Shish Kabobs, Cheese borag, stuffed peppers, lamanjoon (Turkish and Armenian pizza) Baklava, stuffed grape leaves. I could go on and on and on. Now I'm hungry. Enjoy

Turkish food is absolutely delicious! If you live near a bookstore that carries the Eyewitness guidebooks, the Istanbul guide has several pages of very good color photos of food and drinks.

lucky03- be sure to try my favorites and please excuse my phonetic spelling, &quot;IMAM HAB TE BAB&quot; or &quot;the priest fainted&quot; and KADIM BUDU or &quot;ladies thighs&quot; which is a ground lamb meatball shaped like a ladies thigh. When a Turkish co-worker asked if I had ever had Turkish cuisine and I mentioned these two dishes, he nearly fainted. Whatever, you will sure enjoy Turkish food.

hi<BR>It really is wonderful cuisine. Grilled eggplant or made otherways. Beans, chicken, lamb. Best olives I've ever eaten. Fish. The local Turkish restaurant near where I live also makes a wonderful vegeterian musaka. I've been to Istambul also and that is where I learned about the food. It is similar to Greek and armenian but is not the same. I prefer Turkish, some of the dishes were spicier.

My favorite is iskender kabobs, layers of pita, seasoned lamb meat and topped with tomato sauce and yogurt<BR><BR>Here's a link to a menu of one of the restaurants in Chicago we go to<BR>http://www.turkishkitchen.us/menu.htm<BR><BR>The food we've tried there is just like the food we got in Turkey.

To CharlieB: the &quot;priest fainted&quot; eggplant dish is called, to the best of my knowledge, Imam Bayaldi, and not the expression which you had used. So is it possible that your Turkish co-worker has fainted because you said something completely different, like, well, you konw...