Everything is here. Burger King is opening branches all over the place, Kentucky Fried Chicken has jumped in and TGI Friday's arrived about 4 months ago.

Happily enough you can also find the full range of Turkish cuisine without having to look too hard. There are some excellent Iskender (spit cooked sliced lamb with tomato, yoghurt and butter) restaurants, and Ishkembe (tripe soup), a reknown hangover cure, can be sampled at 100's of places. There are a suprisingly high number of fish restaurants in town all of whom serve the traditional hot and cold mezze - something that vegetarians may get quite used to.

Street food abounds in Kizilay with pide, lahmacun, kebaps etc. all easy to find. although you won't want to leave eating too late unless you know where the places that stay open are, and you may not want to eat in all of these.

There are a growing number of cafes and brasseries serving international cuisine (an oxymoron?) at slightly steeper prices than you'd expect and these are clustered in upmarket Cankaya and Gaziosmanpasa. The one thing that is missing is any semblance of a non-turkish ethnic food scene. There is the occasional retaurant claiming to be chinese of mexican but apart from a few notable exceptions you're better off sticking to food that doesn't have exotic pretensions.

For a more detailed breakdown of what to eat where you could have a look at AnkaraLife.com, a site being put together by some friends of ours.

and drink?