Once in a local restaurant in Urfa, most connoisseurs of Turkish cuisine would immediately order the Urfa kebab – the wonderfully tasty pieces of ground meat on a stick, accompanied by lots of onion and tomato fried on a hot plate, spiced with Urfa’s famous red pepper.

Despite the kebab's popularity around the globe, the city's most typical dish is the çig köfte, a meatball of minced, raw lamb. It is the Muslim version of steak tartare. Eating a portion of it in the hot weather is like playing Russian roulette, but there is also a safer, fried version, in which the meatball is rolled in grits.

As a finishing touch, there is a special type of baklava in Urfa – made with cheese and honey. It was created either as a result of the traditional rivalry with the neighbouring town of Gaziantep, where the famous hard ice cream dundurma is made, or from pure culinary genuius. Whatever the case, it is definitely worth a try.