Go to the baklava shop and get a cheese sandwich? Yes!

For a Sunday lunch, I headed back to the row of baklava and pastry shops. Strange, right? But it turned out that, on this particular Sunday in the neighborhood I was in, everything else was closed. So I aimed to turn sweet into savory and bit the bullet. I went to Karakoy Gulluoglu.

My meal was simple. A large cheese borek played the role of food. The many layers of puff pastry gave way to a melty cheese that was a little salty and a little aged. The shop helpfully cut them into bite-sized pieces. It was very good, perhaps the perfect mix of these two ingredients. It was paired with a bottle of ayran, a salty yogurt drink. MMMmmmm, yogurt. Completely unlike the noxious drinkable yogurt drinks in the States and elsewhere, this was not loaded down with sugar and mock fruit. Instead, it was straight-forward and delicious, just yogurt, salt, and water. A great digestif.