Ulus Esnaf Lokantaları (Ankara Tava)

Ankara's food culture is slow-cooked pot food, and its best version is eaten in the tradesmen's restaurants of Ulus. Ankara tava, lamb baked with orzo, then kapama, dried beans and the milk dessert höşmerim to finish. The trays leave the oven around eleven and are gone by two in the afternoon; you share a table with the civil servant beside you and nobody minds. The long-standing places on Denizciler Street and the lanes off Anafartalar are the safest place to start.