Experience Ankara like you know someone here.

One for a proper night out in the embassy quarter, one for cheap plates and cafés with the Bahçelievler students — learn both and you've learned how the city eats.

A döner that isn't the döner you know, lamb baked on orzo, a simit that isn't Istanbul's — the small, stubborn cuisine of a city people say has none.

Kızılay's pedestrian strip — fried anchovies and a cold Efes on a plastic stool, kokoreç at midnight, and the loudest, youngest crowd in the capital.

A hill town of three thousand timber houses ninety minutes west — meat and vegetables baked in clay, eighty-layer baklava, and a carrot on every corner.