13 Best Restaurants in The Turquoise Coast, Turkey

If you are kebabed out, this old town restaurant has some of the best contemporary cuisine on the coast and serves it in an appropriately stylish setting. The menu changes regularly, though it's basically modern European with lashings of Southeast Asia. There's also a stylish lounge area where you can order coffee during the day or cocktails at night. It's on the pricey side for Turkey, but so is most of Kaleiçi—and this is some of the best food you'll find here.

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.

If you want to eat in the harbor area, many would say this your best bet. The tables are well spaced, trees offer shade, the service is good, and the food is excellent (if expensive). Fresh seafood is the specialty, including melt-in-your-mouth garlic prawns, but there's something for everyone on the international menu. The view over the western beach is just right at sunset. Service is attentive; if there's a chill in spring or fall, you can count on the waiters to bring out blankets. Reservations are highly recommended for dinner, especially in high season.

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 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 busy harborside fish restaurant is popular with Göcek locals and visitors alike, and is considered an institution of the town. In summer, the seating extends out toward the waterfront, under tropical trees and with romantic views of the water. Main dishes (kebabs, steak, seafood) are typical, but the pride of the menu is its wide selection of hot and cold meze. The homemade bread is delicious, and wild mountain mushrooms are served as a side dish in spring and fall.

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.

This casual yet stylish bar-restaurant in the old town offers a well-prepared and presented menu of traditional Turkish hot and cold meze, combined with international crowd-pleasers like burgers, fried chicken, and pasta. It's a disjointed approach, but the kitchen manages to pull off this large selection with aplomb. The upstairs terrace has great views over the harbor (sometimes closed off-season), and there’s a lounge on the ground floor where you can stop in for a coffee or cocktail.

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.

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.

Müpptela means "addicted," and, after one visit to this excellent ocakbaşı (grillhouse), you'll understand why the name fits. The mezes are excellent, and there is a wide variety of hot appetizers, grilled meat, and kebab dishes. Friendly, warm service in a sultry outdoor setting on the edge of old Kaş is a final (and big) plus.

For most Turks, dining in Adana means trying the Adana kebab—minced lamb slow grilled over charcoal on a long, wide metal skewer. Everyone in town has an opinion on where to find the best one, but one traditional favorite is Yüzevler. Obviously, Adana kebabs are the star of the show, but the pide is good, too.