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Comment by fsniper | Hacker News Reader

In Istanbul you can possibly find best examples of many if not all of international cousines. It is a city for the all types of foodies.

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Maybe I'm spoiled coming from California, especially LA, but this is simply not true. You'll find phenomenal, quite possibly best, examples of Turkish (obviously) and a variety of middle eastern fare, and you'll find some stand-out good examples of various European cuisines. There are options for American food, but none I would even classify as "good". There is a notable shortage of Asian cuisine, and what they have is definitely nowhere near "best examples", and you'd be hard pressed to find anything from South or Central America, or even Mexico.

I may have exaggerated a bit and I haven't been in Istanbul for 5-6 years already. So let's say I stand corrected.

im asian and ive been to LA it’s definitely an americanized version of asian food. chinese is mostly greasy in la and koreans are good but far from what u get in top restaurants in seoul or busan. i had very good mexican food in the us but was am not mexican so who knows

I would definitely disagree with this. Apart from Turkish food you will probably only find good American, French and Italian ( may be few more) food in Turkiye.

But the good news is you really do not need anything other that Turkish food because it is just amazing.

Especially true for south / far-east Asian cuisines. Unlike many other major western metropolises, Istanbul simply lacks any authentic chinese, indian, vietnamese or japanese places. I wish (as a resident) we had more exposure to those cultures through better / relaxed immigration policies in the past.

I'd argue after having lived in China and Hong Kong for numerous years that very few major western metropolises have proper authentic Chinese (and Chinese food is vast there's a huge amount of differences between regions).

For example, try getting proper cantonese dim sum in Paris or Barcelona. I only know 2 places in Paris that are halfway decent after having searched quite a bit. Or try searching for good Zhejiang food (the Hangzhou or ningbo style) in Europe.

And Chinese food in most of the US is bastardized to make it much sweeter and oily to conform to the taste there making it absolutely terrible and far from authentic.

that's right. Turkish food is the best one Ive experienced so far.

You're being generous. Where's good French food in Turkey? Even Turkish food is getting worse every day.

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