Caught up in the flavorful corridors of history as I was trying to answer these questions, I fell under the spell of the Bosphorus fish. All of the fish that have made the waters of the Bosphorus their home over the millennia share one common trait: their taste, which is enhanced many times over as they swim from north to south through the waters that divide the continents.
Take the Byzantine ‘gufari’, for instance, today’s ‘lüfer’ or blue fish, until recently one of the greatest riches of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. There were even people nicknamed ‘Lüfer’ who lived on the Bosphorus once upon a time. Simple epicures who went out in small boats, caught a blue fish and consumed it with gusto to the accompaniment of a bottle of raki and a few side dishes. In a sense the blue fish is a flavor that has permeated every corner of Istanbul in all its aspects. It even made a great impact on the life of the famous Ottoman writer Ahmet Rasim.
So much so that Rasim said, “I cannot imagine an Istanbul native who doesn’t turn around to look at the mere mention of the word lüfer.”