Eat Well

İskender kebap where it was invented

Bursa's dish, eaten in Bursa: sliced döner on pide, tomato sauce, yogurt, and butter poured on at the table.

₺₺lunchlunchtime — it's a midday dish here

Why do it?

The vertical döner spit was invented in this city. In 1867 İskender Efendi, working in Kayhan Çarşısı, stood the meat upright over charcoal, sliced it thin and served it on torn pide with tomato sauce and yogurt — and the dish that every Turkish restaurant abroad now serves is named after him. His descendants, the İskenderoğlu family, still run the historic shops in and around Heykel; there are two lines of the family, each with 1867 on the sign, and the city argues gently about which is truer. Either way you're eating the original in the only place that can claim it.

The Smileys Take

Do this in your first week, at lunch, in one of the family's old shops rather than a franchise in a mall — the room matters. Order the kebap and a glass of şıra (fermented grape juice, the traditional pairing), and wait for the waiter to pour the browned butter over the plate; that moment is the whole ceremony. Then walk it off through the bazaar. If you've only had İskender elsewhere, this resets the dish. The rest of Bursa's table is below — work through it over your first month.

The rest of the Bursa table

Kestane şekeri — candied chestnuts from Uludağ's slopes; Kafkas in Heykel has made them since 1930.
Pideli köfte and İnegöl köfte — the two other grills the city is proud of.
Cantık — Bursa's small, closed pide, a lunch in your hand.
Kemalpaşa tatlısı — a syrupy cheese sweet from the town of the same name, sold everywhere in the center.
Roasted chestnuts on the street from October — the smell of a Bursa autumn.