Arifoğlu

I love Arifoglu. Every time I am visit Istanbul I always stop here and stock up on my spices.
Spices that are hard to get in Canada, in terms of availability and quality. The owner and his son are very helpful and always give me a treat and little extras when I visit. They always ask me what Canada is like, and it’s nice they are interested in their customers. I love sumac, ufra pepper, saffron, cinnamon, pul biber etc. list goes on and on. Their spices are very fresh and fragrant. I have walked around every possible market stall in Istanbul, except for the Kadikoy market on the asian side of Istanbul, I’ve yet to find another purveyor of spices as good as Arifoglu. Visitors, please come here for spices. Don’t fall for those sample packages or special «turkish spice» mixes in the market stalls elsewhere.

Ignore all the other vendors trying to get you in to their stores as you walk through the Spice Bazaar and head straight here. They don’t hassle people to come in because they don’t need to. They have a great variety of spices & herbs at great prices. But what drew me in was the big sign I thought was kind of funny: «mysterious scent of harem»… I had to investigate. I’m glad I went in, a whole wall is dedicated to their selection of perfumed and essential oils… It was amazing. I wish I bought more!

After reading some reviews from various places on where to go in the spice bazaar, the name Arifoglu came up a few times. So I made some notes on what I wanted to buy, how much I can get it in the states, and prices in various sizes.
When I went to the spice bazaar I took mental note of what prices they had of various spices and what they were selling them for, as one place had one Sumac for 10TL more for a half a kg then Arifoglu had for a whole kg. So after looking around for a while I stopped in Arifoglu, they man with glasses helped me and he was super nice. He saw my list and asked to see it so I gave it to him. He beat all the prices on my sheet, as well as giving me 10% off everything too. Since I also bought about 3 lbs of spices he threw in something for me too.
I bought some saffron from him as well. It was funny because I bought some Iranian saffron, and I brought a sample from home to make sure it was the same stuff since I’m not a spice savant that can tell the difference between the real and real looking fake stuff. He was impressed and give me another discount off the top. It was still al little more than you can get it in the US if you know where to go. But I figured I give it a try. I mentioned Turkish saffron as gift for friends who didn’t cook who wanted it. And he scoffed and said Turkish saffron is stuff other places they sell to tourist who don’t know better. I thought it was funny that he admitted that.
Not only would I come back here if I needed spice and was back in Istanbul. I stopped in again before I left to pick up a few other things I decided to bring back.