There was an abnormal amount of dogs surrounding us, staring and sniffing at the food in front of us, all waiting to see our reactions. We had ordered what a restaurant claimed to be ‘special food’, so being curious, we were brave enough to order three. It had an intense flavor of meat, except something was wrong with the dish. Something that provoked my taste buds into rejecting eating the food, something that tasted as if it were supposed to be eaten by another animal, perhaps a dog or a cat. Something that was almost intended to be fed to the food-craving pekish animals. Was this truly something humans ate with enjoyment? This is what I thought when I ate Kokoreç, a traditional Turkish dish that some people may love, or may hate.
As we were strolling through a busy shopping street looking for a potential place to eat, we stumbled upon a fairly popular-looking restaurant where you could observe them grilling kebabs. Many eager dogs were welcoming us too, so we sat down to look at the menu. We naturally drew attention to the ‘special food’ section and after some debating and hearing the waiter’s recommendation (which was not to order one each), we decided to order three of the ‘Three-Quarters Kokoreç’ and waited for our food to arrive.
A few minutes of dog-petting later, the food came, and I was anxious to try the dish myself as at first, it looked like a mouth-wateringly delicious bowl of meat. I quickly took the largest spoonful I could manage and hauled it into my mouth. It took a second for me to realize this was, in fact, not what I thought it was, but a different kind of meat. After everyone had their first bite, we slowly looked up and turned to each other to see the other’s reactions. They were all the same. We did a quick Google search to see if this dish (Kokoreç) was what we thought it was, and horrorstricken, we found out it was.
Delicately wrapped in fried suckling lamb intestines and grilled on a skewer, kokoreç turned out to be not as tantalizing as I originally thought. The dish is wrapped around sweetbreads and organs, such as kidneys, lungs, and hearts, and sprinkled with cumin and red pepper for a final touch. Hearing this, some may say the dish includes many awful offals ;D (pun intended). I took another bite – this time a significantly smaller quantity – just to be sure, and oh boy, it tasted bad. The fried meat had come with complimentary sauces and condiments such as egg and mayonnaise sauce, but even so the strong flavor revealed itself more than ever. A bowl of griddled offals never really appealed to me, especially eating it knowing what it was. I couldn’t believe we had ordered three, but luckily my appetite had gone extinct, and even more so, we had many furry visitors hungrily and innocently eyeing us with ‘cute puppy eyes’.
Before even thinking, I had given out two spoonfuls of the stuff to the closest dogs which, of course, dashed towards the pile of meat that awaited their tongues to lick clean. I felt bad throwing away all this precious meat, so whenever the chef turned his back, I tossed another spoonful or so on the ground as quickly as possible and hoped the dogs would cover over and hide the food. It worked, and after the dogs slowly devoured three bowls worth of kokoreç, we thanked them gratefully by giving them a week’s worth of petting, even if it was the same as feeding them three bowls worth of dog food. It was a huge savior for us not needing to eat the food, and at the end of the day, the dish was finished, although it was by the wrong animal.
This was most definitely the reason why there were so many dogs awaiting, especially if a foreigner came to eat it for the first time. It was the best free food they could get, and many of the superior dogs were extremely chubby and hardly got up the stairs. Now don’t get me wrong, some crazy folk love kokoreç like most Turkish civilians (according to a friend who lives here), but certainly not me, and I will never go near this dish ever again.
P.S. I am not trying to be disrespectful in any way, all it is is a non-preference towards the food. And all I can say is the dogs loved it. The cats on the other hand were not so keen like us and swatted the food away, clearly wanting better quality food like tuna, not offal!
Leave a Reply