Lima Beans at Süleymaniye

As a lover of İstanbul, I regret to admit, but I went to Süleymaniye zone last year for the first time. I could only see famous Süleymaniye mosque since it was close due to restoration during the year when İstanbul was the 2010 capital of world culture?! Süleymaniye, which has the second biggest dome after Blue Mosque and is the tallest mosque in İstanbul… Top 10 İstanbul traveler guide and many others passionately recommend this place as a touristic charming place. There are tourists more than local people. Meantime, far eastern tourists with umbrellas are around.

Last year my friends had told me that there were places famous for their lima beans (kuru fasulye) around the mosque. And, they especially recommended the one at the corner. Since that time I intended to go to the place again.

I and my friends dedicated our whole Saturday to discover İstanbul’s historical places. Firstly, we did a Golden Horn trip by two-tier touristic buses. Unexpectedly, cars didn’t leave main roads and completed tour around Golden Horn in 75 minutes. You can only see historical places if they are on the main road, otherwise they are only mentioned at audible explanation. Or, you need to get off at hop-on, hop-off stops and find the places. We got off at Eminönü stop and went ahead at Prof Cemil Birsel Street and reached Süleymaniye in the end.

First of all, we went to the lima beans place named: Kanaat Lokantası Ali Korap Kuruluş: 1939, opposite to the mosque at the corner. There are tables on the rough cobblestone pavement square where shadow of glorious architecture and trees falls. We settled ourselves on the tables with pleasure towards the sun. Pickles of cabbage, carrot, plum and cucumber were brought to table at first. We ordered lima beans, rice and diced cucumber garlic and mint in yoghurt (cacık). When I read that döner was also very delicious at foursquare, location based social network, we ordered that too. Meat free and bitter spicy lima beans was very delicious. Its dermeson kind of lima beans comes from Erzincan.  It is cooked at coal fire. Rice with butter and diced cucumber garlic and mint in yoghurt went well with that. Döner was also cooked at coal fire and it was served with warm thin crispy pita like bread (lavas ekmeği), rice, chips, tomatoes and grilled peppers. Crackling meat was so delicious. We drank our Turkish coffees with pleasure afterwards. Despite the crowd, they were interested in our table closely. Place is clean and tidy. Prices are moderate. We enjoyed both eating nice dishes and chatting at a historical place. Besides these, they also serve Turkish home cooking. In the meantime, there was lamb stew with vegetables (tas kebab) but there was no place left at the stomach.

We strolled in the mosque and the courtyard complex which is the one of the rank Works of Architect Sinan, where graves of Kanuni Sultan Süleyman and Hürrem Sultan are also there. After exit we dropped in the Lale teagarden. Many stairs are descended to reach the stone courtyard which has a pool in the middle. It is a kind of asylum especially at hot summer days.  A shadow of a tall plane tree falls on the teagarden and so it is very cool. It has a mystical eastern atmosphere. You could spend hours with your book or magazine, unless there were noises of folksong and dices of backgammon. There is also hubble bubble here. This is the one of the nice places which you would come and never forget. We loved Süleymaniye zone a lot, we’ll come back here again :)