With the brutally forceful clearing of Gezi Park of its temporary inhabitants by Turkish police, the recent protests in Istanbul have lost the imposing physical presence that, incredibly, lasted for two weeks. These days, protestors are tossing ideas onto social media walls to see what might stick. To keep the resistance alive, we’ve been urged, via Facebook, to take part in all sorts of acts, passive and active, madcap and practical. But the one that really struck a chord with us is a campaign not to spend any money in shopping malls, not to even enter shopping malls, and to spend only what we must at small, local shops. Boycott the mall? Now, that’s a battle we’ve been waging since the late 1980s.

Editor’s note: While the fate of the Gezi Park occupation is being hotly discussed, we’ve been spending our time sipping deeper into Turkey’s other great debate: what is the country’s national drink? In the spirit of national reconciliation, here is our report. The recent protests that raged across Turkey may have been sparked by the government’s ham-fisted efforts to bulldoze a precious stand of trees in Istanbul’s Gezi Park, but the country’s eaters and drinkers had already gotten a taste of Ankara’s increasingly meddlesome overreach during the weeks and months before.

We generally prefer to keep our nose in a bowl of soup and out of the political arena, but over the weekend, Istanbul’s politics seeped through the cracks in our windows, in the form of teargas and general mayhem. As longtime foreign residents of Istanbul, we’ve found it relatively easy to steer clear of political activity, but every so often it barges into our homes and turns our stomachs.

Editor’s note: This post wraps up our special series this week featuring our top street food picks in all of the Culinary Backstreets cities. As rapidly as Istanbul marches toward its modern destiny, street food in this city is still served the old-fashioned way, by boisterous ustas with a good pitch and, sometimes, a really good product.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, My husband and I are planning a visit to Istanbul with two little ones in tow. We love to be adventurous with food and want to explore the city’s culinary scene, but are also a bit concerned about finding “child-friendly” places to eat. Do you have any recommendations?

Kadınlar Pazarı – a pleasant, pedestrian-only square in Istanbul’s Fatih neighborhood – is the closest thing the city has to a “Little Kurdistan.” The area is populated by migrants from Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast region, and small market stalls and butcher shops selling honey, cheeses, spices and other goodies from the region surround the square. Visiting the atmospheric area is a great way to get a taste of Southeast Turkey without having to leave Istanbul.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment of “Spring (Food) Break 2013,” featuring our favorite foods of the spring season in each city Culinary Backstreets covers. This year’s Nevruz celebration, an ancient welcoming of spring, may be remembered for its political significance in which a peace deal was struck between Turkish leaders and Kurdish rebels. But once the shoulder-shrugging, line-dancing, fire-jumping and ululating are over, the real bounty of the season will continue to be celebrated all over Turkey and in many Istanbul restaurants, from the chic to the shabby.

Lahmacun is one of those mysterious foods where a lot is created with so little. It checks all of the boxes of a perfect savory snack: crispy, oven-fired crust, light and spicy meat spread, a fresh green garnish and a tangy spray from a lemon. It’s like an artisanal pizza with a Middle Eastern topping wrapped around a side salad – for the cost of a shoeshine.

In a 2003 TV commercial for Cola Turka, the actor Chevy Chase was seen speaking Turkish and then sporting a moustache, after taking just one sip of the intended challenger of Coke in this country. This sensational ad – which riffed on the old theme of American cultural imperialism through its number-one agent, Coca-Cola – was the first time that Turkish soft drinks caught our attention. Though we didn’t take to the overly sweet Cola Turka, we did start looking beyond, to its local brethren in the market: gazoz, a world of nearly extinct Turkish carbonated drink brands with a fanatical following.

The Turkish proverb “At, avrat, silah ödünç verilmez” (“neither horse, wife nor weapon should be lent”) is sometimes repeated as a way to recall the nomadic warrior past of the Turks. The primal Turkish essentials are clearly stated, but what about the çay bardağı, the tea glass that has become such a ubiquitous Turkish icon? Reading the 17th-century works of Evliya Çelebi, the Ottoman Rick Steves, you’d expect to find descriptions of medieval tea jockeys swinging trays filled with those tulip-shaped glasses through the alleyways of the Old City. Right?

Until we visited some of Istanbul’s shrines to the baked bean, we generally regarded the dish as something eaten out of a can beside railroad tracks. But Turkey takes this humble food, known as kuru fasulye, seriously; that means chefs in tall toques carefully ladling out golden beans in a rich red gravy onto monogrammed flatware, served by waiters wearing bowties and vests. Even in the least formal of Istanbul’s beaneries, the guy manning the pot has the air of a high priest who knows that his incantations alone conjure something unusually delicious out of a simple dry white legume. This is no hobo fare.

We are unabashedly fanatical in our love of hamsi, or anchovies, a late fall/wintertime specialty whose arrival we eagerly await each year in Istanbul, where the tiny fish are most commonly served pan-fried, grilled or in pilaf. But as any hamsi aficionado knows, for the best anchovy-eating in Turkey one must go directly to their source: the country’s Black Sea coastline, where the catch is brought in.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ll have an eight-hour layover in Istanbul and was wondering if you have any suggestions for places to go for a good Turkish breakfast and lunch. I love to eat at small, local places serving authentic food. I would prefer restaurants in the Yeşilköy area, as I have to be back at Atatürk Airport to board an international flight (which I cannot afford to miss!).

After four years of publishing weekly dispatches from Istanbul’s culinary backstreets (on IstanbulEats.com and now on this site as well), we are still regularly surprised by new discoveries, impressed by the staying power of old standards and shocked by how quickly so much can change. For better or for worse, it is that dynamism that Istanbulites line up for, and the city never seems to run short on it. Heading into 2013, we are licking our chops in anticipation of the expected and the unexpected, which are always sure to be delicious, or at least interesting. Here are our Best Bites of 2012.

We would have liked to like the profiterol at İnci Pastanesi, and to believe their claim that the profiterole was invented on the premises in the 1940s. But in fact, we’ve always appreciated İnci for non-culinary reasons. Until last week, this old-school Beyoğlu pastry shop had been spooning out cream puffs covered in chocolate goop for almost 70 years with respect for tradition and a refreshing contempt for the latest trends in interior design. Our eyes had grown used to resting on its charmingly worn façade as we walked down İstiklal Caddesi. For better or worse, İnci was an institution.