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Rating:  Summary: Not much help for Vegetarians Review: I bought this book partly because I know that Turkish food features a lot of meat, and I'll be visiting with my wife who is a vegetarian. Can you believe that a book that is *ALL* about food, does not even mention vegetarianism, nor when they list "handy phrases for restaurants" do they list any phrases that deal with the topic? For that matter, they don't deal with any topic having to deal with food allergies, being on a diet, etc. Essentially this is a book about helping people make smart choices when eating in Turkey, but the only people they want to help are people who will eat anything. I should have saved my money.
Rating:  Summary: Don't leave home without this guide. Review: Like armies, tourists travel on their stomachs, and nowhere are the prospects for culinary delight better than in Turkey. So don't leave home without this compact but very complete guide to what's on the menu, what's in the market, what's on your plate and what you can ask for as you travel. The book starts with a short summary of the history of Turkish cuisine, then embarks on a food-tour of the country's seven regions. There are recipes to cook at home before departure, useful foodie phrases ("Where can I see this being made?"), and an extensive listing of translated menu entries.Robert Arndt, editor, Aramco World
Rating:  Summary: No traveler should be without an EAT SMART guide. Review: The authors have written a series of Eat Smart books that no traveler to foreign countries should be without. Each book covers a separate country--Eat Smart in Turkey, Eat Smart in Brazil, Eat Smart in Indonesia and Eat Smart in Mexico--and is chock full of information that you won't find elsewhere within the covers of one easy-to-carry paperback. Individual chapters cover such topics as the history of the country's cuisine, regional foods, how to shop in the local markets, mail-order sources for suppliers of ingredients, and a collection of recipes for typical dishes found in that country. Especially useful is each book's extensive menu guide, listing menu terms alphabetically in the language of the foreign country, with a description of the dish in English. That section is followed by a chapter titled "Foods & Flavors"--listing the foreign terms for foods, spices, kitchen utensils and cooking techniques, with an English translation/description. These books are well researched, accurate and very informative. Highly recommended. --Sharon Hudgins, editor, Chile Pepper magazine
Rating:  Summary: The best culinary guide to Turkey--period. Review: The long title of this book does not even say it all. It's undoubtedly the best guide to Turkish cuisine *by far*.
I've written best-selling guidebooks on Turkey for nearly 40 years (first for Frommer's, then for Lonely Planet for 20 years), traveled (and eaten) in Turkey almost every year since 1967, and Peterson's book still taught me lots of new and interesting things about Turkish cuisine. I'm still learning from it.
This was not a contract job done on assignment for a big publisher in a hurry. The authors are obviously heart-and-soul foodies who started publishing their own culinary guides because they couldn't help but do it. It shows.
And they're not gourmands, but gourmets: they are truly fascinated by the subtleties in the art of delighting the palate. To most writers, food is necessary and fun. To the authors of this guide, food is tradition, art, innovation, achievement, delight.
And Turkey is a great place to be a foodie. Once the center of a vast, agriculturally rich empire home to hundreds of peoples and cultures, it developed an elaborate and subtle cuisine based on careful preparation of fresh ingredients. It's the perfect country to travel through with a food guide, and this is the guide to take.
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