Eat father eat.

When I was growing up we didn't eat out all that much, well, not unless we were on holiday, but that's a different topic all together. There were a few places that we'd get take aways from, fish and chips after swimming or trampolining of an evening and very occasionally a Chinese from the Golden Coin. However the restaurant that figures strongest in my childhood eating memories is Ye Bambam Ye at Cemetery Junction (nothing at all like the execrable film presents it to be). This was a Turkish place, split between a take away on one side and a smallish traditionally decorated restaurant on the other. Dark carpets, shishas and tapestries were the order of the day as far as decoration was concerned and for us Edwards children it was the nec plus ultra of dining sophistication. It's funny thinking back to the sorts of dishes I remember, platters of rice, grilled meats and vegetables, chilli and garlic dips, flat bread, actually all the things that I love to find in restaurants now.

The restaurant was to the left, what is now sadly the Up The Junction bar

Moving swiftly through the wilderness years of living in Glasgow where despite BBQ Kings' best efforts, their chicken shish was really only a sideline to their bread winners of large doners and chips'n'cheese (both yellow and orange cheese if memory serves), I found myself travelling to Turkey with my sister to visit various Anatolian Greek sites as part of her degree. This naturally meant we would spend several days in Istanbul, where from a hotel in the Beyoglu we did all of the touristy things and ate quite a few kebabs. Sadly, beyond a couple of slightly disappointing fish dishes I don't have any great recollections of the food, slightly odd given that even at that time I was beginning to pay undue attention to whatever it was I shovelled into my mouth.

25th birthday dinner somewhere in Istanbul

Several years later I was in Izmir for a wine conference, the European wine bloggers conference to be precise, hold oddly in the Asian side of Turkey, but I'll drop my geographic pedantry and get back to the food, which with one exception was pretty awful. Large banqueting style dinners are never the way to get under the skin of a countries eating culture. Thankfully my desire to avoid paying extortionate hotel fees had seen me book a place in the centre of the town some twenty minutes walk from the conference site, a walk that took me down the back lanes of Izmir and right past the lines of outdoor kebab stalls, intoxicating would be one way of describing the smell. Rickety white plastic tables and chairs, seemingly snaffled from a children's party (the only way I could explain their diminutive size) would be swiftly wiped down while I drank sweet black tea. For the record I favour half a sugar cube per glass, yes I concede that over the course of a day one edges into diabetes threatening levels of sugar consumption, but it is only on holiday that this happens. Then the unshaven chap in the filthy white apron would bring me my wrap. The small round flat bread wrapped ice cream cone like round freshly sliced beef (I know it was beef because when I queried what it was he put his hands to the side of his head like horns and proceeded to moo, who needs to speak the language) that had been grilled on a horizontal spit in front of wooden embers. A small amount of lettuce, tomato, cucumber and yoghurt completed the snack. I returned every day of my stay. I was hands down the best food I'd ever eaten in Turkey, smokey, succulent, tantalisingly fatty and just the right size to allow me to eat a modicum of whatever rubbish was going to be put in front of me later in the day.

How it's done properly

I now live in South London, disgustingly close to the palace of joy that is FM Mangal and as such have lamb shish and adana wraps mere moments from my door, it's no surprise that they now know me by name.