Seafood supreme at Girida restaurant, Fethiye

 For the first five days of our recent holiday in Türkiye we stayed at the Ece Saray Hotel in the Ece Marina in Fethiye and the seafood restaurant Girida was the closest eatery to the hotel, with quayside tables and views over the many moored yachts, and  we ate there twice.

 

The beauty of it was that one could go into the restaurant to look at and pick your fresh fish. 

My first meal was grilled salmon fillet  (600 TL) 

and the second one was Amberjack șiș (R550 TL.)  The fish was perfectly grilled and incredibly flavourful. The salad served with the fish was extraordinary in the simplicity and the diversity of textures and flavours. Turkish salads are just so superior.

 

Sadly, even if Cape Town is a coastal city, we never see this quality of seafood or presentation at our restaurants.

 

Girida was also where I started my Turkish journey of San Sebastian cheesecake, this one served with hot, dark chocolate.  It was good but not the best; the best was at Books & Coffee in Istanbul, close to the Galata Tower but far away enough not to be a tourist trap.

 

During my previous visit to Istanbul in 2022 I ate a great deal of seafood and the octopus I had in a restaurant in Arnavütköy was the highlight of that trip whereas the two meals at Girida, on a holiday where we always ate well, were the culinary highlights of this holiday.