In this episode of my food-focused podcast Hungry for Words, I chatted with Robyn Eckhardt. She’s a widely published food writer whose works has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Saveur and many other publications.

While living and working in Asia, she and her husband, photographer David Hagerman, were looking for a sunny, yet inexpensive place to go on vacation. They knew little about the country before their first visit. After just a couple weeks, they fell in love with the food, the people and the country itself.

They returned to Turkey as often as they could. Finally, they ditched their day jobs and headed there to write a book about it. They spent 16 months traveling to every corner of the country by car. They tasted and researched the cuisine as they went, even venturing the edge of two war zones.

The result is their fabulously insightful book, Instanbul & Beyond: Exploring the Diverse Cuisines of Turkey (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

In this podcast episode, we discussed how many people dismiss Turkish food as simply a lot of kebabs. In this fascinating conversation, we explored the remarkable diversity of the country’s cuisine and how the geography dramatically affects it. We also chatted about her time covering street food in Asia for The Wall Street Journal, a fascinating assignment.

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