Istanbul is a huge city filled with history, water, and food. The restaurant scene is equally full of variety - you can eat traditional Turkish food to your heart’s content, but there are also plenty of modern and international restaurants to choose from. Best of all, it’s big enough to support at least three vegetarian restaurants.

On first night in Istanbul fled the atmospheric, but tourist heavy, Sultanahmet district for the hipper Taksim zone just across the Galata Bridge. We started the night with cheap beer at a fun bar called Sinergie, then set out to find a well-known vegetarian restaurant called Zencifel Nature and Peace.

According to our Lonely Planet, it should have been at no. 8 Kurabiye Sokak. But wasn’t. Not only that, when we asked locals for directions no-one had heard of it (the fact that most locals worked in surrounding restaurants may have contributed to their amnesia).

After making the near fatal mistake of wandering off into a dangerous part of Istanbul, we returned to the original street for one last try. We didn’t find Zencifel, but we did stumble across a vegetarian restaurant called Parsifale at about the same address (no. 23 Kurabiye Sokak). We assumed Zencifel had changed names and went in.

Parsifale is a small, narrow cafe with a Parisian air. The menu is a mix of Turkish vegetarian dishes, like guvec stew and stuffed artichoke with potato, carrot and dill, and international favourites like lasagne and vegetarian burgers.

Our group of four ordered the guvec, which came in the traditional clay pot with rice and salad on the side, two mushroom and soy burgers (served simply as the burger patties with salad on the side, rather than in a bun) and the lasagne. The meals were healthy and fresh, and it was nice to have a break from the staple vegetarian mezze dishes. As an added bonus, the bread that came with the meal was brown, not white, and served with olive oil.

Later in Cappadocia, we had dinner with a lovely American couple, Gizelle and Vadim, who had also set out to find Zencifel and ended up at Parsifale, confirming that our experience was not unique.

By then, however, we had a coda to the story: Zencifel is alive and well and can be found on the same street!

We only realised our mistake because by chance our friends bought a Time Out Istanbul magazine, which included a review of Zencifel, but at a slightly different address (number 3). A couple of nights we set out again. Once again, the restaurant was not quite at the published address but fortunately this time it was close enough for us to find.

Zencifel is in an old, stone Turkish house which has been extensively renovated. The main room has a double storey ceiling, and there some more private tables lining the back, bright red wall. However, the outside courtyard was the perfect place to sit on an Istanbul summer’s evening, and we were lucky to grab the last table.

The regular Zencifel menu is quite small and looks unadventurous. However, there was a long list of interesting dishes on the specials board which we ended up ordering from exclusively.

We tried the vegetable salad (actually three small and delicous bean salads), yoghurt soup with chickpeas, Aegean stew with fennel, dill and artichokes, sea beans in yoghurt, and soft lentil patties which were served without being fried first.

Each of these dishes was pre-prepared and served cold (like most mezzes in Turkey). However, they were unlike any other food we tried. The Aegean stew in particular with its mix of flavours, and the freshness of the bean salad, were a real treat.

If you’re spending some time in Turkey it’s worth trying both Zencifel and Parsifale, because you won’t find anything like them elsewhere in the country! But if pressed, I’d choose Zencifel only because the food experience was more original. If you are not big on cold food, go straight to Parsifale.

We did try to visit the third vegetarian restaurant in Istanbul ( a raw food restaurant called Saf, also in Taksim). Unfortunately we left it to our last day, which happened to be a night when it was closed. This is far swankier (and more expensive) that the other two vegetarian restaurants, but reputedly has amazing cocktails and (in my view) enormous novelty value given raw food is the antithesis of traditional Turkish cooking.

If you want a complete guide to Istanbul for vegetarians, please check out Isil’s wrap-up at Veggie Way , which is the definitive account.

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