Balat Backstreets Where Locals Still Play Tavla

Balat backstreets where locals still play tavla

Most guides will send you to Balat for the photograph. The colored houses on Kiremit Caddesi, the rainbow stairs, the church with the cobblestones in front. Fine. Take the photo. Then walk one street back.

The Balat backstreets where locals actually live start about thirty meters off the photo route, and they look almost nothing like the Instagram version. This is where Hasan grew up, where we still run our food walks, and where I would send a friend who wants to see what a Friday morning in a real Istanbul mahalle (neighborhood) actually sounds like.

Spoiler: it sounds like tavla (backgammon) tiles.

Start at the Balat renkli evler (the famous colored houses) if you must, get the photo out of the way, and then turn uphill into the streets behind them. You are aiming for the small kahves (neighborhood coffeehouses) that sit on the corners of Vodina Caddesi and the smaller streets that branch off it. There is no sign telling you which one to go into. That is the point.

A Balat kahve is not a café. There is no oat milk. There is no menu in English. There is usually a television playing a football match nobody is watching, six small tables, a samovar in the corner, and between four and twelve men of an average age of about seventy. They are drinking çay (Turkish tea) from tulip glasses, smoking if they can get away with it, and playing tavla.

The tavla is the soundtrack. Two tiles hitting wood, a dice cup slammed down, somebody saying something in Turkish that is half complaint and half blessing, then the tiles again. This has been the sound of Balat backstreets since before any of us were born. It will be the sound after we are gone.

You can walk in. Nobody will stop you. They might look up for a second, decide you are not interesting, and go back to the board. Order a çay (it will cost you fifteen to twenty lira, and they will bring sugar cubes you do not need). Sit at the empty table. Watch a game.

A few things to know if you do this.

One. Do not photograph the men without asking. They are not a tourist attraction. They are old men playing a board game on a Tuesday morning. If you want a photo, ask, and accept that the answer is sometimes no.

Two. If somebody invites you to play, the polite answer is to say you do not know the rules well (you probably do not, the Turkish version moves faster than you think). They will then either explain or wave you off. Either is fine.

Three. Bring small cash. These places do not take cards. A çay and a simit (sesame-crusted bread ring) from the cart outside is forty lira, maybe fifty. You will not spend more than that unless you stay for three hours, which is also a normal thing to do.

When you are done with the kahve, walk further into the streets. Past Makam-ı Balat and toward the older Greek and Armenian parts of the neighborhood. The houses up here are not painted for photographs. Some are restored, some are falling down, some have laundry strung between them and a cat asleep on every third doorstep.

For lunch, Meşhur Balat Köftecisi 1948 has been doing the same köfte (grilled meatballs) for three generations. It is busy at 1:00 PM and quieter at 11:30. The plate with beans, rice, and pickle is around 250 lira and has not changed in any way I can detect since I was a kid.

If you want bread instead, Çinili Taş Fırın on the Kadıköy side does the same job, but in Balat the small bakeries on the side streets near the Bulgarian church do poğaça (small savory buns) that come out of the oven around 9:00 AM and are gone by lunch. Buy two. Eat one walking.

The trick with Balat is to slow down. The colored houses take ten minutes. The backstreets take three hours, and you will not have seen everything, and that is fine. Come back next week.

The tavla games will still be going. They always are.