Food festival frenzy

Across the country, there seems to be a craze for organizing food festivals. It feels like every town has one popping up, especially before the summer season and upcoming religious holidays begin, in the hope that each town’s culinary merits will gain media coverage. We food writers are invited to most, not only to write about regional cookery and produce, but also to moderate panels. Of course, we cannot attend all of them, as many of the events are usually crammed into a single weekend. After traveling twice to Antalya, I found myself in Bursa, not for a food festival but for a unique performance combining music, gastronomy and culinary history. I happened to be part of the performance as well. It was truly an amazing experience, worthy of a whole other article.

Charm of Ayvalık

Now, I am finally in Ayvalık, a lovely coastal town in the northern Aegean region. Here, I just had my “moment of the season” experience while moderating a panel with elderly local legends. We are here for
the Ayvalık Gastro Fest, where there are many food stalls of local restaurants and producers, as well as many opportunities to taste various olive oils of the region, as the town was the foremost port in the Aegean Sea for olive oil trade. I’m writing these words while having breakfast at the lovely, family-owned boutique hotel Kapya, located at Cunda, one of the most charming neighborhoods of Ayvalık. Once an island, it is now connected to the mainland by a bridge-like road, making it feel like a place unto itself. Kapya Hotel gave me the long-lost spirit of family-owned small bed and breakfast places, their home style breakfast buffet features delectable home-baked delicacies. Cunda is special with its cobbled, winding narrow streets, old stone buildings, and a nice coastline walk lined with countless fish and meze restaurants. The mainland town of Ayvalık has its own charm, with nice seaside teahouses. The historic fabric of the town center is dotted with occasional old-style restaurants or eateries. The owners of such places were my panelists, and I must admit that I was delighted to meet them. They are the ones who carry the culinary legacy of historic quarters like Ayvalık, and they are the ones who sustain the living spirit of the town. Otherwise, the sameness overtakes every town center, with the same coffee chains and fast-food outlets dominating the food scene.

True spirit of historic towns

Our panel had four panelists with the title “Living Legends of Ayvalık,” referring to the culinary scene. There was one local eatery owner/cook (Altınova Ege Lokantası), one meatball joint owner (Aranan Köfteci), one pastry shop owner (İmren Pastanesi) and one coffee house owner (Şeytanın Kahvesi). They were all quite characters, they all conquered the heart of the audience, but definitely the second-generation owner of Aranan Köfteci, Esat Özağra, was the clear winner. His story seems to be irreplicable today. His father, originally from the island of Mytilene, began training him at the tender age of seven. On the first day of primary school, his father forbade him from going home after school hours, but instead ordered him to work with him at his köfte joint. Köfte is the word for meatballs, and the name of the shop “Aranan” is quite funny, meaning “sought-after” or “in demand.” In short, it means a köfte-maker is much in demand. He says he is 77 years old now and has spent every single day in the köfte shop since age 7, except for the period he was in the military service. He has one comment on how to keep places like his afloat. He strongly argues that kids should start the profession as early as possible, of course, as long as the law permits. All the panelists had heartwarming stories, and all had dedicated their lifetimes to their work. They still hope the next generations will continue their businesses. When Suat Kaçak, the character behind Şeytan’ın Kahvesi, spoke, he brought to attention a whole other dimension. He provided insight into how coffeehouses operated in the past, before cellphones, and even before television. Each coffeehouse used to buy the daily newspapers, and customers used to come early in the morning for that, and in a way, coffee houses used to be venues where the news was generated, off course, alongside endless discussions of politics and local gossip.
The true spirit of historic towns lies in such age-old places and the owners who have sustained those venues through the generations. The owners of those age-old places are also the living spirits of the town, and usually they are the characters that give a historic neighborhood its unique character.