AI-made picture of the dish, not a house photo
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Our dish — the plate we'd order here firstFish-roe spread
Where it comes fromIstanbul's own
A meze of the city's Rum tables; roe also sat on Istanbul's nineteenth-century iftar table.
Sources: Nur Çintay, Sabah (2013); Özge Samancı, İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi (2015).
At Kıyı
A roe spread, the first plate on the house's cold meze.
From Kıyı's own menu and pages, as we read them in October 2026.
Also on our table
Turkish · Bosphorus fish house · meze · Tarabya, Istanbul
Haydar Aliyev Cd. No:186/A, Tarabya, 34457 Sarıyer, İstanbul
A two-storey Tarabya room that has kept the Bosphorus meze table and the season's fish since 1966. The cold meze are its standing reason.
We'd add
White beans cooked in olive oil, served cold
A dish of the Christian fasting days that the meyhane came to know as the Armenian's pilaki.
A Bosphorus meze the house has set out at Tarabya for decades, before the fresh fish.
If there's room
Mussels stuffed with rice
Stuffed mussels were a house dish of the city's Armenian cooks, whose skill with them an almanac singled out in 1888. In the 1960s, families from Mardin near Galata learned the stuffing from Armenians and took it onto the street.
Mussels filled with rice, among the cold meze.
Also kept here
Bosphorus bluefish
Each autumn the bluefish run down the Bosphorus, and Istanbul's fishmongers sort them by size into grades of their own. Since 2024 the Bosphorus lüfer has been registered by name.
Also kept here
Dried spring mackerel
In spring the thin mackerel that had spawned were hung up to dry, and Balat's Jewish families dried them for the city. Çiroz went to the iftar table and the meyhane alike.
Also kept here
Fish soup
In 1938 Kör Agop began selling fish soup from a boat at Kumkapı, the fishermen's quarter. The palace kitchens' records list fish soup too.
Been here?
Eaten at Kıyı? Tell us how the room felt and which plate you'd go back for. A photo, if you took one, goes up under your name.
Pictures of the Tarama or anything else from Kıyı help the next person order. Tag each one with its dish and it carries your name.
