Pide
Photo: E4024 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Turkish boat-shaped flatbread with toppings of minced lamb, sucuk and egg, pastırma and cheese, or spinach, baked in a wood-fired oven until the dough crisps and the topping bubbles.

Pide is the Turkish flatbread cousin of pizza and Levantine manakish, with documented origins in Black Sea cooking from the 19th century. The boat shape (pide is named for the elongated form) developed in the wood-oven pidecisi shops of Trabzon and Karadeniz, and spread to Istanbul in the 20th century. Tarihi Hocapaşa Pidecisi and Borsam Taşfırın are the city's reference operators, with sucuklu-yumurtalı (sucuk and egg) and kıymalı (minced lamb) the canonical toppings.

3 editor picks for Pide in Istanbul, ranked by editorial score. All Istanbul signature dishes · Pide across every city.

Tarihi Hocapaşa Pidecisi ★ 4.3

₺TurkishEminönü

Tarihi Hocapaşa Pidecisi off the Sirkeci side-streets, pulling kıymalı and kuşbaşılı pide from a wood oven since the 1960s for the lunchtime suit crowd.

OrderKıymalı pide, Kuşbaşılı pide, Lahmacun

Borsam Taşfırın ★ 4.2

₺TurkishKadıköy

Borsam Taşfırın in Kadıköy, a stone-oven lahmacun and pide salon running since 1968 with a counter line that turns over every five minutes at lunch.

OrderLahmacun, Kıymalı pide, Yumurta pide

Borsam Taşfırın Kadıköy ★ 4.2

₺Street foodKadıköy

Borsam Taşfırın in Kadıköy, the 1968 stone-oven lahmacun counter that turns a single 15-minute bake into the city's most reliable lahmacun under 80 lira.

OrderLahmacun and pide

Learn to cook it, or eat it with a guide

Pide makes more sense with someone from Istanbul explaining it. These are the classes and tours we have checked, with booking links.

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