İşkembe Çorbası in the UK: what it is, how to order it, where to find it

What işkembe çorbası is

Cleaned tripe is boiled for two or three hours until tender, then cut into small strips. The broth is thickened with a liaison of egg yolk, flour and lemon, sometimes with milk, into a pale, creamy soup with the tripe suspended in it. It comes to the table plain, and the diner finishes it: a spoon of vinegar with crushed garlic, a shake of red pepper flakes, sometimes dried mint. The Ottoman story is that it was a hangover cure, and işkembeci restaurants in Istanbul stay open all night for exactly that trade. Paça çorbası, made from lamb's trotters, is the richer cousin served in the same places.

An acquired taste

The flavour is mild; the texture is the challenge. Properly cleaned and cooked tripe is tender and faintly chewy with no smell; badly prepared tripe is rubbery and tastes of the farmyard. The garlic vinegar and pepper are not optional: they cut the richness and are the reason the soup works. Turks who love it, love it; those who do not, avoid the subject. It is worth trying once in a place that specialises, with plenty of garlic vinegar.

How to judge it

The broth should be creamy and pale, the tripe cut fine and tender, and there should be no off smell whatever. The garlic vinegar should arrive alongside in a bottle or a small jug, with pepper flakes and mint. A restaurant that makes it every day, especially late at night, is the right place; a restaurant that has it on the menu but rarely sells it is not.

Where in the UK it is done well

A few lokantas and late-night restaurants in Harringay, Dalston and Enfield make it, and occasionally the ocakbaşı houses offer it as a starter. It is rare outside London. The ranking below counts restaurants in our directory whose name signals işkembe or a lokanta.