Istanbul: Pudding Shop (August 2009)

My spouse and I enjoyed dessert at the Pudding Shop in Sultanahmet in late August 2009. We stopped at the Pudding Shop earlier in the day for some tea, and the owner was so friendly and (cafeteria-style) food looked so fresh and good (particularly a cake-like dessert that our guide called “poor man’s baklava”) that we decided to return for dessert. The Pudding Shop is the nickname for the Lale Restaurant. It became popular in the 1960s as a meeting place for beatniks, hippies and other travelers on overland route between Europe and India, Nepal, and elsewhere in Asia - the "hippie trail". The restaurant got its colloquial name as a result of "word-of mouth" from numerous foreign travelers that could not remember the name of the eatery but did remember the wide and popular selection of puddings sold there and thus referred to it as the "pudding shop". In 1978, the Pudding Shop was featured in the popular book and movie “Midnight Express”.