Welcome to Delicious Istanbul!
Hi, am Olga! I run Istanbul food walking tours and cooking classes and help my mother-in-law run her restaurant at the countryside.
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Tag Archives: Starting your business
What are you chasing: productivity or authenticity?
I have spent a good part of Sunday helping with the breakfast at our countryside restaurant in Sapanca. You would get surprised how much attention it takes to do an open buffet for 40 people over 4 hours. I was only helping with refilling the buffet, bread basket and stock of tea glasses (imagine a Turkish breakfast without the properly brewed strong tea!). Couple of times I went down to the kitchen to speed up dish washing. In between I edited a post, sorted some photos and replied to a couple of emails. Then I spent the afternoon running between the computer, supervising hotel room cleaning, doing our own laundry and ironing restaurant table clothes. The day has passed like that - in the errands of the family business and little chats with the family members in between.
Why You Should Start a Lifestyle Business
How would you define a business that draws on a big passion rather than a calculated business plan, gives you freedom to decide when to run it or take a break and gets you enough money to finance our lifestyle without creating an empire? Business like my Istanbul food tours and cooking classes. Lifestyle business is the word which I have picked from a recent blog post by Penelope Trunk.
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Why IPhone is No Better Than Blackberry
I entered the atelier of half-a-teaspoon: millions of sunbeams gathered in the room with white bricks, a bunch of young ladies in summer dresses seated at the large table, lemonade and freshly baked quiche invitingly placed in the middle of the action. The atelier was hosting a meeting of the Moscow Startup Women club and by pure coincidence I joined.
Earlier that day I was sitting at home and grieving over my miseries with the painstakingly long UK visa application which kept me stuck in Moscow away from my Istanbul kitchen, its bustling markets, the blue Bosphorus and the lush green hilltop not far away from it. In a wonderfully serendipitous way a long-time-no-hear friend showed up in my inbox with a rescue plan. I was going through the newsletter from Masha Kicheeva, inspiring entrepreneur who elegantly turned the idea of baking boxed cookies into the out of the box corporate presents. Among the other upcoming events at her atelier she mentioned the meeting of Moscow Startup Women Club. That very night. “I am coming” - I shot. “You are in Moscow? Hurra!” - Masha replied.
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3 Things to Do Immediately After Quiting Your Job
I have officially quit. My travels have been fruitful and I have found what I was looking for. Three months ago when I took a sabbatical and headed out traveling a colleague asked me, ‘Is it an “eat, pray, love” thing?’. ‘I am doing the eating part only’, I replied then. But she was right in the sense that overworked and lost I found strength to sit down and think of the things which really matter and to re-learn to accept myself and the fact that my love for food is a legitimate way to happiness, relating to the people, looking at the world and making a living. So I have quit as I am relocating to Istanbul and start running food walking tours for the visitors interested in experiencing rich food and eating culture of Istanbul.
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Your Business Can Start At a Very Unlikely Place
So here I am in the midst of my 3-month sabbatical. For starters I wanted to discover the Balkan region I had been itching to see for too long, to find out vegetarian origins of some of the most meat-reputed national cuisines, to share food and stories with like-minded foodies and yet more importantly - to give myself space and freedom and define the exact place that food has got to take in my life. Quite a mission!
