• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Turkey's For Life

Turkey's For Life

Fethiye, Turkish Food, Slow Travel Turkey

  • Fethiye
    • Book Hotels
    • Things To Do & See
    • Restaurants & Bars
    • Beaches & Bays
    • Walks & Hikes
    • News Updates
    • Weather Forecast
    • Events Calendar
  • Turkish Food
    • Turkish Recipes
    • Vegetarian & Vegan
    • Turkish Food Guide
    • Turkish Street Food
    • Turkish Desserts
    • Eating Seasonally
  • Slow Travel Turkey
    • Book Hotels
    • Antalya
    • Datça
    • Kaş
    • Bodrum
    • Istanbul
    • Lake District
    • East Turkey
    • UNESCO Sites
  • Show Search
Hide Search
Real Chips

Real Chips Fighting Back – Turkish Homemade Chips On The Comeback Trail

Chips (kızarmış patates – fried potatoes), although not often associated with Turkish cuisine, definitely make an appearance from time to time on the Turkish table.

While a Turkish dish might not traditionally be served with a mountain of chips on the side, deep-fried vegetables, including those of the potato variety, often appear on the trays of the bain-marie in Turkish lokantas.

A few years ago, we stayed near the town of Datça with the parents of a friend for a few days. The mum was a fantastic cook and, for evening meal, served a feast of Turkish food, including a huge, communal plate of kızarmış patates.

We remember watching as she prepared the chips first and then put them out on the table to cool right down while she served the rest of the food. We thought this very strange, but what was even more strange (for us) was, when we could all eat no more, the chips were placed in the fridge and served again – cold – with breakfast the morning after.

And, we recently had a village breakfast in Kayaköy with Turkish friends. They ordered chips to go with it. Chips with breakfast is perfectly acceptable…

Real Chips
When it comes to chips, you just can’t beat the real homemade chips

So, we’ve established that Turks eat chips. But where are we going with this?

Well, the first time we came to Turkey on holiday, we were really pleased that wherever chips were served, they were real chips. Real slices of potato that had been dropped into hot oil and deep-fried.

To get real chips in a restaurant in the UK was nigh on impossible, so it made for a refreshing eating experience.

And then, as the years progressed, the dreaded, powdery, frozen French fry started to make an appearance at many of the eateries in and around Fethiye.

We worried for the future of the chip as more and more places served the easier, frozen variety and more and more of our Turkish friends embraced the world of ‘fries.’

Tasty, homemade köfte being served with frozen fries – just not right! Was real food going to lose out to its processed competitor?

Well, fear ye not, real food lovers. The real chip – the kızarmış patates – is fighting back and is enjoying a bit of a renaissance in Fethiye.

While there are many restaurants that will continue to churn out meals served with ‘fries’ (and yes, we know there are many people out there who prefer them), other restaurants have stood firm throughout and even some of the new places have opted to serve the real fried potato.

Hurrah to that, we say.

Which side do you fall on? Are you a fan of real chips or do you prefer the frozen ‘fries’?

June 29, 2012 by Turkey's For Life 14 Comments

Filed Under: Fethiye, Turkish Food Tagged With: Turkish Breakfast

Don’t Miss A Thing!

Sign up to get our latest articles delivered straight to your inbox

Privacy Policy, Cookies Notice & Disclaimer

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. laurie

    June 29, 2012 at 10:37 am

    Chips for ever !!!!! 🙂

    Reply
  2. Turkey's For Life

    June 29, 2012 at 11:09 am

    @ Laurie: We fully agree with you on that one. 🙂

    Reply
  3. [email protected]

    June 29, 2012 at 11:58 am

    real chips for sure! but, even here it is hard to find ones prepared correctly.

    Reply
  4. Turkey's For Life

    June 29, 2012 at 12:16 pm

    @ Jaz: The chips in the restaurants in Fethiye – the ones that do real chips – are usually really decent. Just wish more places did them. 🙂

    Reply
  5. Backto Bodrum

    June 29, 2012 at 12:40 pm

    You don’t see the cold fried potato served with yogurt in many places any more. A generation of Turkish children have grown up thinking (like our kids) that chips are always hot.

    Reply
  6. Alan

    June 29, 2012 at 3:22 pm

    . . we tend to stay away from the fake food joints in Dalyan, especially after we found a great little place way up in the mountains (wonderful in the hot weather). They, in common with everywhere else would serve chips that were cold, limp and blobbed with yogurt. We persuaded them to do chips the way we liked them; that was 12 years ago and we’ve enjoyed the real thing ever since.

    Reply
  7. Turkey's For Life

    June 29, 2012 at 3:50 pm

    @ BacktoBodrum: They’re still served like that in some of the lokantas in Fethiye. Turkish people are not keen on their food being too hot, are they? A lot of our friends started to prefer the ‘fry’ but they seem to be going back towards the more traditional fried potato of whatever temperature. Here’s hoping. 🙂

    @ Alan: Glad you’ve found your place that you can keep returning to time after time. We’ve clocked the real potato places in Fethiye. 🙂

    Reply
  8. Jack Scott

    June 29, 2012 at 6:28 pm

    Let’s hear it for fat chips! We always had cold chips on our boat trips from Yalikavak. Personally, I prefer them warmish…

    Reply
  9. Turkey's For Life

    June 29, 2012 at 7:52 pm

    @ Jack Scott: Brits to the end aren’t we? We’ll admit to preferring a good, hot, fat chip. No frozen fries for us. 🙂

    Reply
  10. Belinda @zomppa

    June 30, 2012 at 4:18 am

    These are AWESOME!!!!!!!! They look perfect.

    Reply
  11. Turkey's For Life

    June 30, 2012 at 6:57 am

    @ Belinda: You can’t beat a real, fat chip. 🙂

    Reply
  12. Sarah

    June 30, 2012 at 2:43 pm

    Great cause. Long live the real chips! Chips for breakfast sounds great to me.

    Reply
  13. Turkey's For Life

    June 30, 2012 at 3:06 pm

    @ Sarah: It may seem trivial to many but it really irks us. Glad you agree! 🙂 Thanks for your support – although even we didn’t participate in the chips for breakfast. 😉

    Reply
  14. ReluctantRunner

    June 9, 2013 at 8:23 pm

    For real chips in the Fethiye area, I can recommend Mutlu Cafe which is on the main road between Ovacik and Hisaronu. In a sea of restaurants serving ‘full English breakfast, all day, every day’, Mutlu was a welcome respite. The menu is limited, but everything we tried was good – and cheap!

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Get FREE EMAIL Updates

Keep up-to-date with new articles

Privacy Policy, Cookies Notice & Disclaimer

Footer

Copyright © 2022

Keep In Touch

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Fethiyespor
  • Online Jigsaws
  • Privacy & Cookies