A Film Series Across Two Cities

To celebrate our ten years of Brother Marcus, the founders went back to one of the key cities of inspiration. Tas and Alex flew out with a camera and let the winds guide them through two days to find the best local gems and markets that Istanbul had to offer.

Part one features a traditional breakfast that keeps coming, the king of baklava himself, offal bubbling hot off the charcoal, and the best fish wrap in the city waiting on the far side.

Check out everywhere we went in our Travel Guide.

Part two of our ten year anniversary trip back to Istanbul, the city that has been fuelling the food since the very beginning. Day two heads inland, into Beyoğlu, where the markets are swept spotless and the best counters have not changed in forty years.

Everything gathered along the way was heading somewhere: a one night supper club above the city, eight courses, all of it built from the bazar.

Part two takes in a market of purslane and vine leaves still on the branch, börek under a dust of icing sugar, forty years at a pide counter, and the whole road served on a plate in a mansion won at a hand of poker.

A normal Greek morning starts with a cigarette, a coffee, and if you’re lucky, bread with butter and honey. That wasn’t for us. Day one in Athens ran from a sesame koulouri at dawn to a bar that started as a pop-up outside its own building site.

Day two started early, back to the market for the last of the Cretan veg and prawns fresh off the ice, then the rush across town to Piraeus. Everything gathered along the way was heading somewhere: a lunch for ten suppliers, all of it cooked from the produce they’d spent decades perfecting, and highlighted with the freshest ingredients the market had to offer.