Photo taken on March 5, 2022 shows Pistachio sultan at a dessert shop in Istanbul, Turkey. The streets of Turkey's biggest city Istanbul are filled with a variety of delicious foods, desserts, drinks, attracting Turkish people and tourists.(Photo: Xinhua)

In a traditional restaurant in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep, chefs, like all their counterparts in any other restaurant in the Turkish gastronomy hub, have been perfecting their craft to remold centuried recipes to satisfy modern palates.

"Our cuisine is ancient and rich. We have about 500 recipes and here we serve about 80 of them to our customers," Taner Olca, the third-generation owner of the locally renowned Yesemek restaurant, told Xinhua.

In a blend of East and West, the rich culinary heritage of Gaziantep has become a mainstay of the local economy. "In Gaziantep, we live for the food. At breakfast, we think of what we are going to eat for dinner, and at dinner, what we are going to eat later at night," the young restaurant owner said.

The richness of ingredients and spices, and the exchange and fusion of various cultures have generated Gaziantep's unique gastronomic cultural traditions, he added.

One of the culinary masterpieces in the city is beyran, a spicy soup served as breakfast, where tender strips of lamb topped with rice are drowned in a rich and fiery broth teeming with red pepper flakes.

"I have been cooking beyran for 35 years. It is made of an entire lamb except the head. The meat is cooked for 14 hours on a special stove one day prior to serving," Okkes Babacan, chef from the Metanet restaurant located in the heart of Gaziantep's old city, told Xinhua. 

"This is a recipe inherited from the Ottoman period," the veteran chef said.

Declared a Creative City of Gastronomy by UNESCO in 2015, Gaziantep holds a special place in the Turkish cookbook.

"We attach great importance to Asian, and particularly, to Chinese visitors who come to Gaziantep for cultural and gastronomy tourism," said Fatma Sahin, mayor of Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality.

Xinhua