Today, we went to Nisantasi with the intent of going on to one of the markets. Unsurprisingly, it was closed, what with it being a lockdown, but on the way we explored some interesting new streets, including one lined with cake shops. Finding the market closed led to a minor crisis as the GF was very hungry (I had had a snack to keep me going) and was unable to decide on a place to stop. Fortunately, nearby in Bomonti was a place we had marked on our map, so we walked another 5 or 10 minutes to find it. This was a peculiarly global style of cafe, with a Scando-Japanese aesthetic, and aspirations to be a lifestyle sort of place. They even had an inhouse magazine with a special issue on sustainability (unclear if there were any other issues), and it made me think it would be great fun, if perhaps soul deadening, to write one of these hipster magazines. The food on offer was, inevitably, bowls. These actually turned out to be very good – fresh and high quality ingredients, all very flavourful, nothing creative but well done. We could not eat in the restaurant of course, so we ate on a bench outside and enjoyed it enough that we ordered some drip coffees and cake. The cake was matcha cake and the coffee was from named roasters and both were very good. It was the sort of place that makes me furious when it is poorly done, but here it was quite well done so I was pleased and relieved. It could have been nearly anywhere in the world aside from the Turkish language and the fact that the Japanese bowl came with basmati rice, and the quite spectactular views outside. The cafe is on the ground floor of a skyscrapery residential tower, very like the ones back in KL, but the tower is set on a hillside overlooking a small bowl-like landscape which was a vertiginous mixture of tall buildings, rows of old houses, streets going nearly vertically uphill, and a motorway cutting across. I don’t know how low long that view will survive as there was a barren patch just outside which looked like construction was imminent, but it was something to see for now.
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