Erol Restaurant

Feels like a family owned business. Staff is very friendly, food is fresh and tasty. We had 2 dishes and 2 rices each. One dish and one rice might be enough, 2 dishes and one rice if you want to try different specialities like we did.

Read about this restaurant in Lonely Planet. Was told a lot of the restaurants around this (very touristy) district hike up their prices, but we didn’t find this one to be like that. Local food and unlike the other restaurants we weren’t hustled in. Arrived at noon and were the first ones there for lunch. Appears to be a family owned place. They showed us the food with descriptions and we pointed to what we wanted. The food was delicious! Tried 7 dishes (cauliflower, lentil soup, green beans, three kinds of meat either in a goulash form or stuffed in zucchini) and dessert. They take credit cards and are very attentive and welcoming.

This place serves really good traditional food, it’s a nice place to escape from all the tourist trap restaurants. Everyday they serve different dishes, with plenty to choose from as vegetarians or vegans as well. If available, try the okra or any of the eggplant dishes. The staff is amazingly friendly as well. In addition, it is really cheap; about 10 TL for a plate of veggies or rice (I would advise ordering a few plates and share them amongst each other). They don’t seve alcohol and the interior is not extremely appealing, but they make up for that by doing everything to make you enjoy your meal. We went there a few times, I would advise you to do the same. But be there on time though, if they’re out of their food, they’re really out of food :)

We were staying in the VERY touristy Sultanahmet area of Istanbul. Great location for site seeing but not good for finding authentic, local food.
Luckily, we were able to find Erol. It’s located a few blocks from the main tourist strip. Unlike the majority of restaurants in that area, this restaurant does NOT have someone standing in front trying to herd in tourists.
The style is Ottoman and they are only open for lunch. Each day they make a few different dishes. You walk in and order by the serving counter. If you don’t speak Turkish, you can just point to the ones you want.
The food was amazing. Try the meatballs (cooked in an egg coating). The stuffed eggplant was also very good. Actually everything was delicious and so much better than the tourist traps near by.

What a great little gem of a place in the middle of a forest of tourist traps! I found this recommendation on the website IstanbulEats which focuses on traditional-​style quality Turkish restaurants. As we sat here waves of local workmen came and went — this seems to be the local canteen. But don’t let that make you shy, although Erol, the owner doesn’t speak a lick of English, the server does (somewhat) and was more that happy to let me come up to the counter so I could point out what I wanted. «Yes, Lady» he kept saying with a big gold-​tinged grin. We had a great little table on the street and we’re happy as clams. Each dish is about 10 lira and a glass a tea to wash it down is 2. We had a couple dishes and some tea and and after leaving a 10% tip spent ~40 lira.