We went on this culinary tour during an 8 hour layover in Istanbul. We spent around 5 hours on the tour including transport time which had us back at the airport at just the right time before our flight. We were also able to keep our carryon baggage in the tour car so we didn’t have to carry it around all day.Our guide Osman Özmen brought us to a bunch of delicious local places in the Taksim area, and we got to sample what he promised was local food. It was all excellent! At our request, he even arranged for a Turkish ice cream vendor to play the classic turkish ice cream trick on me (look for videos online). Osman catered the tour to our request: we’d been to Istanbul before and had seen the major sites, so he still showed us some cool stuff (like the spice market) but kept our short trip focused on new sights and food. He took us to a few local grocery stores and specialty shops to see fresh honey and local cheese, and he took us to a great Turkish Delight shop that also had a beautiful selection of teas and spices. This didn’t feel like a high pressure sales pitch, it was just another selection of foodstuffs to experience on our tour. Overall it was a great way to spend our layover which we otherwise would’ve spent trying to figure out transportation or cooped up in the airport. We’d highly recommend it, just don’t eat beforehand! Other than transportation between the airport and the city we spent the whole time walking (or sitting and eating). One of our party had a recent leg injury so our guide catered the walking pace to our needs, which was perfect. On our tour, we ate: Adana Kebab (common turkish meat wrap) Ayran (salty yogurt drink) Kokoreç (lamb intestines, kind of like a bruschetta) Midye Dolma (stuffed mussel) icli köfte (breaded meatball) Kestane (roasted chestnuts) Turkish ice cream Dolma (stuffed vine leaves) Patlican ezmesi (eggplant dip) Deniz Börûlcesi (glasswort seaweed salad) Zeytinyagli kuru domates (sundried tomatoes) Kadinbudu köfte (meatballs) Greek salad (spread made of cheese and some sort of green, like spinach) Fistikli Baklava (typical sweet turkish desert) Künefe (sweet grilled cheese with honey) Tūrk kahvesi (coffee) Cay (tea)