Eat Well
Piyaz, hibeş and şiş köfte: eat like Antalya
The city's own table — tahini-drenched white beans, a cumin-tahini dip, and grilled köfte in old-school lokantas.
Not yet checked by the Smileys team — prices and hours may have moved.
Why do it?
Antalya has its own food identity, and it isn't hotel buffets. Piyaz here means something it means nowhere else in Türkiye: white beans dressed in a thick tahini sauce, served as a dish in its own right, not a side salad. Alongside it come hibeş — a fiery tahini-and-cumin dip scooped up with bread — and şiş köfte off the grill. The old köfte-piyaz lokantas that serve this trio are where working Antalya actually eats lunch.
The Smileys Take
Order piyaz as a main, not a garnish — that's the local way and the whole revelation. The right venue is a plain, busy lokanta with a queue at noon; follow the crowd, not the decor. This meal is cheap, fast and completely of this city, and doing it in your first week beats any restaurant list we could write. Doing it weekly is how you start to belong.
Explore nearby
Do it with people
Nothing is scheduled around this in Antalya yet. When a host plans it, it shows here — the calendar and hangouts are the places to look meanwhile.
More like this
There's always more Antalya.