Bizim Lokanta in Kemeraltı, İzmir: Tripe and Chickpea Stew

After visiting for the second time in a single week, I wanted to share our feast of chickpeas with tripe on the blog. First, a little about where to find this remarkable dish. Kemeraltı—something like İzmir’s answer to Istanbul’s Tahtakale—is one of the city’s most historic districts. It is an enormous commercial centre where old covered-market traditions survive, with crafts and products still clustered by trade. You can probably imagine the maze of streets: tiny shops, music in the air, the smell of döner cooked with butter and, completing the scene, the glittering robe of Kemeraltı’s trademark mesir-paste seller.

Leaving that newspaper-travel-supplement description aside, Kemeraltı is also rich in traditional tradesmen’s restaurants, known in Turkish as esnaf lokantası. When we arrived at this tiny place, recommended by our dear friend Coşku, we could hardly believe the queue at the door. Nobody waited for an entire table; each empty chair was occupied immediately, and strangers simply ate together. The old restaurant was called Bizim Lokanta. It sits on a side street parallel to Kızlarağası Hanı, slightly tucked away, but almost anyone nearby can point you towards it. We had heard that everything was good, yet we came specifically for the celebrated chickpea stew with tripe. We squeezed in beside a group of young men in suits, while a waiter cleared the table at lightning speed and shouted our order towards the kitchen.

The dish tastes almost as though an excellent tripe soup has been transformed into a chickpea stew. Instead of the meat found in an ordinary chickpea casserole, it contains pieces of tripe that seemed to have been fried in butter. The vinegar and garlic were balanced beautifully. It is rich, but so delicious that we ate it with enormous pleasure.

If you visit İzmir, this is one of those local scenes worth seeking out. Fish soup is another of the specialities, but we left that for next time. Current business listings checked in August 2026 still show Bizim Lokanta at 911 Sokak No. 4 in Kemeraltı, usually operating as a daytime restaurant and closed on Sundays. Hours can change, so call ahead before making a special journey.