37 Best Restaurants in The Turquoise Coast, Turkey

Don’t be put off by the entry through a narrow passageway: follow it and it opens up into a cheery, sophisticated café-style dining area that's airy and filled with plants. The family-owned restaurant near Hadrian's Gate serves up tasty home-cooking, and is a great-value option with a small menu focused on meatballs and other grills, traditional Antalya-style bean salad, and meat- or potato-filled mantı (dumplings).

Tucked in a leafy corner of the fish market, this smart, upscale restaurant is something of a diamond among the more rough and ready crowd of restaurants that encircle the market. Specialties of the restaurant include zesty octopus salad and rich shrimp casserole, plus other seafood and fish dishes which really showcase the best of Aegean flavors. The bustling market setting adds a fun environs, especially for people-watching.

Fresh, creative mezes, eclectic seafood dishes, and zingy salads are accompanied by a great list of high-quality Turkish wines at this local culinary institution, which recently moved from its former terraced setting to a new, tranquil garden setting among pomegranate and fig trees. It's the same owners behind the tantalizingly inventive but great value menu, whose culinary combinations are not often found elsewhere.

Though the sweeping sea view is the star attraction of this meyhane above the harbor, the service and the food hold their own. Fresh fish, seafood, and meze are the traditional pairings with the rakı and Turkish wines on offer, including a wide array of tasty grilled shrimp dishes, köfte, and lemony fried fish.

Every Turkish village has a fırın: a tasty, unpretentious bakery that churns out a daily bounty of smooth puddings, flaky pastries, fresh bread, and sweets. The amazing thing about this one is that it's survived in the heart of touristy Kaleiçi—and with reasonable prices, and friendly service. Options include spicy spinach börek and incirli cevizli muhallebisi, a delectable milk pudding flavored with local figs and walnuts.

This restaurant in the Finike marina is famed for its kebab dishes, but it serves a full menu, including fish and meze. There is a pleasant garden shaded by plane trees and acacias. Everything here is so fresh that the chef refuses to add anything but olive oil and salt to flavor his meats and grilled chicken, and he doesn't need to.

Ata is a down-to-earth, traditional Turkish restaurant in often tourist-oriented Kalkan, and known for its tender, flavorful kebabs. The menu also includes pide cooked in a wood oven and the classic array of mezes, salads, and hot starters. The casual seating is on a patio overlooking the main road into town.

The menu at this harbor-front eatery focuses on wide-ranging international classics: think anything from chicken kievs to Asian stir fries. Despite the lack of focus, the restaurant offers tasty dishes, with big portions. The restaurant caters predominantly to the British expat crowd (hence the rather ambitious prices), and offers a nightly happy hour and a legendary party on New Year's Eve. All the desserts are made on site. It's worth calling ahead to reserve a table right by the water.

This Antakya-style meyhane draws a lively crowd of diners with its atmospheric setting and delicious local cuisine. Tables are arrayed in the courtyard (avlu) and on overlooking balconies in a restored mansion, making the place feel like one big dinner party. If you don’t fill up on meze like hummus, mütebbel (eggplant dip with tahini), olive salad with sour pomegranate molasses, or atom (yogurt laced with spicy peppers), there are kebabs and other grilled meats aplenty—and crispy candied pumpkin with tahini and walnuts for dessert.

This relaxed restaurant on a side street in the town center serves fish, seafood, and meze and is popular with locals, who prefer fresh, unfussy fare to a river view. Its small dining room would be utterly austere were it not for the decorative tile accents; most seating is outside, at tables decked out in a classic Mediterranean blue-and-white color scheme. There’s no menu, so ask the prices before ordering, especially for fish.

This restaurant by the harbor has a “back to basics” approach focusing on fresh fish, seafood, and a well-stocked counter of mostly vegetarian meze freshly made daily. Service is fast and friendly, and the atmosphere, beside a road a line of busy bars, is fun and lively.

This simple little restaurant just off the main intersection is keenly kept by a chef from the town of Bolu, legendarily the hometown of Turkey's best cooks. Individual attention is assured. There is an extensive menu with many hot and cold meze, seafood, and grilled meats.

A humble and hospitable spot for a quick bite on your way to or from the beach and ruins, this simple, open-air eatery offers a wide range of gözleme (a stuffed Turkish crepe), including those with less-common fillings like eggplant and cheese or chicken with walnuts, as well as sweet options. You can also get egg dishes, meatballs, chicken kebabs, and other standard fare.

Tucked away in the backstreets of the old city's bazaar near the clock tower, Ciğerci Memet Usta serves up some of the best kebabs in Adana, the country's reigning center for grilled meat. Try the specialty ciğer (grilled liver), the eponymous Adana kebab, or the homemade şalgam (spicy pickled black carrot juice).

This tiny upscale restaurant run by German-Turkish owners blends European style, atmosphere, and creativity with local ingredients and flavors. The result is a refined, low-key environment, with well-made food that provides an interesting variation on typical Turkish cuisine like zucchini flowers stuffed with local fish instead of the usual rice.

A homey little spot offering home-style fare, this is a good place to have a satisfying and inexpensive meal before or after embarking on excursions from the nearby minibus stop and riverside docks. Choose from a daily selection of meze behind the counter or a heartier traditional dish like pan-fried meat with peppers and onions. In the evening, there’s more of a mini-meyhane vibe, with beer and rakı available at its handful of tables, mostly outside.

No trip to Antakya is complete without eating künefe, a rich dessert with thinly soft cheese in between layers of pastry, baked in an oven and topped with sugar syrup. A row of shops selling the local sweet line the road in between the bridge into the old town and the beginning of the Uzun Çarşı. Ferah, in business since 1948, is a deservedly popular favorite.

A few blocks north of the fray, Flash attracts more locals than tourists and survives on word of mouth. It’s known for soups, steaks, kebabs, and meat stews cooked in a clay pot (kiremit); it also makes delicious oven-fired pide and lahmacun (wafer-thin spiced-meat flatbread). Come ravenously hungry, and you may have room for a dessert of künefe, a rich confection of cheese, strands of stringy pastry, and sugar syrup sprinkled with pistachio.

This long-standing favorite has a panoramic view of the harbor and excellent traditional Turkish fare that's focused on fresh seafood, though meat, chicken, and pasta dishes are also on the menu. If you're lucky, it will have grida (grouper) as a daily special; if not, try the fried squid with tarator sauce—a mixture of yogurt, garlic, lemon, walnuts, olive oil, and bread.

Tour groups often fill this restaurant at dinner for good reason: the food is both delicious and inexpensive, a combination that also makes it popular with locals at lunch. The restaurant also offers a nice, traditional Turkish breakfast. Expect all the usual Turkish dishes, plus local specialties including soups, stews, and börek pastries.

Little-consumed most other places in Turkey, hummus is a mainstay of the Antakya diet, and the old town is full of tiny, no-frills shops serving up little else, often as a filling breakfast. Jolly İbrahim, a hummus “usta” (master), who learned his trade in Lebanon, makes everything from scratch—even grinding the sesame seeds for his own tahini. Orders come with pillowy bread and an array of spicy peppers and pickles.

One of the most popular traditional Turkish lokantas around the church of St. Nicholas, Ipek doesn't look like much, and the waiters can be surly, but excellent meat dishes and generous portions make this the restaurant of choice for many.

Situated in the heart of Kaleiçi, this meyhane that bears the same name as its neighborhood serves the best mezes in Antalya, as well as an array of hot appetizers and the freshest seafood. Expect great service in a spacious outdoor atmosphere.

With a prime spot right on the beach, Karakuş is a beautiful spot to enjoy any time of day—and if you spend 500 TL on food, you'll get sunbed and umbrella use for free. The mezes, grilled fish, and oven-fresh flatbreads are delightful, and the beachfront scene is serene.

The waves practically lap over your feet at Kekik’s tables on the sand, lending a romantic air to this laid-back restaurant on Datça’s waterfront. Fish, seafood, and mezes are the specialties, including dishes incorporating the famous local almonds as well as wild herbs. Indoor dining is also atmospheric, in a traditional stone house.

In business since 1950, Kervan draws hummus lovers to eat its house specialty, served warm with a choice of toppings, including chickpeas and butter, köfte (meatballs), chicken, or cheese—all with spicy peppers and pickles on the side. The only thing on the menu other than hummus at this simple eatery is the equally delicious fındık lahmacun—miniature flatbreads topped with ground meat cooked in tomatoes and spices.

This homey lokanta is a good-value place to grab a quick bite after visiting the nearby castle. Choose from the daily array of traditional Turkish stewed or sautéed meat and vegetable dishes displayed at the counter, or order a grilled kebab or spit-roasted döner. It’s in the maze of streets below the citadel on the inland side, next to Eski İbrahim Ağa Cami.

An Ölüdeniz institution, this casual restaurant set back from the seafront at the eastern edge of town serves up hearty fare at reasonable prices. In addition to its crisp, thin-crust pide with a wide variety of toppings—including vegetarian options such as spinach or mushrooms—Kumsal’s large menu encompasses kebabs, pizza, fish, and international dishes. The service is friendly, and there’s an open-air terrace upstairs, away from the heat of the pide oven.

The location is its best asset, and a fantastic one it is at the eastern end of the harbor. Mermerli is a spacious, breezy terrace that offers phenomenal views of the sea and the otherworldly mountains in the distance. A stalwart Antalya harborside dining scene, the Mermerli restaurant opts for a crowd-pleasingly broad menu that includes fish, steak, pastas, burgers, Turkish grills, and all-day breakfasts—but the prices reflect the location and the cooking won't blow you away. It's a good place to eat if you want to relax on Mermerli Beach, too—the private bathing spot (costing 250 TL to enter) is just down the steps, and the restaurant controls access.

This excellent, straightforward Turkish restaurant is on the western edge of the bazaar and favored by locals for its kebabs, pide, and traditional casseroles. It's open all day, morphing from a breakfast joint in the morning to a family restaurant in the afternoon to the perfect place for a late-night snack at 3 am. The same owners also operate the somewhat more upscale Meğri Restaurant in the center of the bazaar.