In Turkey’s third-largest city, food is a fierce marker of identity, one where calling a gevrek a "simit" is a minor social offense and keeping tomatoes out of your kokoreç is a local mandate. While its glam big sister, Istanbul, tends to hog the international spotlight (and the mistakenly placed lion's share of culinary acclaim), Izmir is home to its own Sephardic legacies, Balkan influences, and a certain coastal defiance.

To say that the Izmir neighborhood of Basmane is rough around the edges would be an understatement, but there are more diamonds in the rough here than we can count. Next to the central train station, Basmane is just to the east of the vast and vibrant 17th-century Kemeraltı Bazaar and the Hellenistic-era Agora of Smyrna. Yet the neighborhood has a storied history in its own right, one that is as labyrinthine as its cluttered, hazy maze of streets.

Izmir’s quintessential sandwich, the kumru (the Turkish word for turtle dove), derives its name from the birdlike shape of the elegant, curved roll in which it is served. Throughout the Aegean coastal city, there are two varieties of this ubiquitous sandwich: One is served fresh from a cart with a slice of local tulum peynir (sharp white sheep’s cheese), tomatoes and optional green pepper. The other version is a greasy, salty and downright decadent configuration of grilled sucuk, salami, thinly sliced hot dog strips, two types of cheese, pickles, tomatoes and occasionally ketchup and mayo, dwarfing its humble predecessor. While the simpler kumru dates back to the mid-19th century, it was in the 1940s that sandwich shops started grilling them up with sausage and melted cheese.