Kızıltoprak Bafra Pide

Bafra pide is a special type of pide, narrower, longer, and closed. Think of a snake-ish crispy calzone. This place is a hole-in-the-wall shop in some random and quite street. But it dishes out great pide for Istanbul standards.

What to order: Go for the classics, like pide with minced meat, cubed meat and cheese. If you like, ask for an egg in it. The fatty pide is going to be dripping after each bite anyways. No alcohol here, opt for an ayran.

What to know:
Bafra pidesi is supposed to be crispy, skinny, long and its crusty exterior glistening with melted butter. Bafra is a province of Samsun, a Northern Turkey town famous for its local pides and pide rivalries. Just like Italians can be said to be the Christian Turks, pide could ignorantly be called the Turkish pizza. In that sense Bafra pide would be the Turkish calzone. Yet its shape is so iconic even the Samsun municipality has strict dimensions of it on their website: “a portion (230 grams approx.) should be 3-4 centimetres wide and 70-75 centimetres long. Bafra pide is served by being cut into six equal pieces (around 12-13 cm long) and is prepared with local Bafra butter, golden yellow in its colour (the real colour of milk)” I love how informative their parentheses are. What else can be said?