I’m visiting Istanbul for a week from San Francisco. Nişantaşı is full of restaurants that look like Midpoint — hybrid Italian/French/American food. Pasta, burgers, salads, sandwiches, pub food, pizza. As one can expect, they are quite bland and unspecialized messes when it comes to food quality. This restaurant would do no more than a star or two in SF or NY. Locals’ palates when it comes to western food seems severely lacking.