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Fried calamari, a crowd-pleasing appetizer served at seaside restaurants across Türkiye, has been ranked the best-rated Turkish dish on the online food guide TasteAtlas, edging out better-known staples like kebab and baklava.
The guide’s "Top 100 Turkish Foods" list, last updated Oct. 21, puts kalamar tava at No. 1 with a score of 4.5 out of 5.
The dish is made of squid rings soaked in milk, battered, fried and served with a tartar-style sauce and lemon.
Antakya kunefesi is a warm dessert from the southern city of Antakya, made with shredded pastry filled with unsalted cheese, baked on both sides and soaked in syrup. It was granted Protected Geographical Indication status in 2006.
Oltu cag kebabi, a lamb kebab from Erzurum, is roasted horizontally over wood embers with slices shaved off and served on the skewer. Beyran corbasi, a spicy lamb and rice soup from Gaziantep, is traditionally eaten for breakfast.
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Rounding out the top six, at 4.4, are Afyon sucuk, a spiced beef and buffalo-meat sausage, and fıstıklı sarma, a pistachio-paste pastry from the Gaziantep area.
Other dishes rated 4.4 include hunkar begendi, a lamb stew served over creamy eggplant purée. TasteAtlas says the dish is believed to have been first prepared in Istanbul for the wife of French Emperor Napoleon III.
Familiar street food also made the list. Lahmacun is among the dishes rated 4.3 in the top 20.
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