Last Night's Dinner

Taksim is the place all the tourists in Istanbul go to see after Sultanahmet.  It's also the place where the better part if Istanbul's night life can be found.  From the Taksim square, which is a huge roundabout merged with a bus stop, one can either go to a variety of towering hotels, the AKM (Ataturk Cultural Center), or down the packed main commercial street.  The crowds are serious here, most of the time you're caught in a quickly moving throng and the busy times you're packed in like sardines.
The street reconstruction has finished, at least for the time being, and with the warmer weather has come street performers.  When a band begins a well known song everyone who knows it joins in signing.  While we ate dinner, the table next to us was being serenaded and the patrons were all singing along, meals nearly forgotten as they sang tune after tune.
The place where we ate is this famous collection of restaurants that are in all tourist picture of Istanbul.  It's a covered concourse made to appear to be a narrow alleyway between elegant old buildings.  The chandeliers are filled with flowers and as you walk in waiters try to seat you, promising you the very best prices you'll find anywhere.  Perhaps I do not have the most discriminating palate, and I stand by the phrase, "Hunger is the best spice." But the actual quality of food seemed the same as any home-style Turkish restaurant.  And considering the location and fun atmosphere, the prices were not nearly as inflated as what could be attempted.  It may change as tourist season picks up, but we were also the only noticeably (at least to me) foreign diners in the concourse.
I appreciate any restaurants with a strong local presence, and that's probably the best way to judge the food quality to price ratio in Istanbul.  So if a place is charging twenty lira a plate and you don't see a single Turkish word on the menu...  you might do well to try next door.

The ladies have been entertaining guests non-stop it seems, but this new group is the first I've interacted with for a few months.  Having people looking around with wide eyes reminds me that I am really someplace different.  When I first came to Istanbul things seemed so alien even crossing the street was an experience.  When I arrived my first stop after the airport was a restaurant in Taksim, I still remember the feeling of total senory overload, looking around at how everything was different, my brain struggling to get oriented within the environment.  Now I'm caught wondering at people's reactions a moment while I say to myself, "But that's the way things are..."
This Saturday we will visit the archeology museum in Sultanahmet.  I'm looking forward to the changes spring will bring.