Knocked up abroad: the baby-friendly difference

by Meg Nesterov on

Me in Istanbul on Mother’s Day, 7 months pregnant, with Dalin baby product mascot

Just over two weeks ago, I made the leap from pregnant American in Istanbul to expat with child. My decision to have my first baby in a foreign country has been met with reactions from friends and strangers ranging from surprise and curiosity to outright disapproval. The transition to new parenthood is a strange and challenging time for nearly everyone, but living in a country that respects pregnant women and worships babies has made all the difference. While baby and child bans are being considered in many places from travel companies like Malaysia Airlines to American restaurants, Turkey remains one big baby-friendly country.


On the surface, Istanbul is not an easy place with a baby. The city is crowded, traffic is terrible and taxi drivers will barely pause to let you run across the street, and the sidewalks are a mini Olympics for a stroller with few ramps, cracked pavement, uneven cobblestones, and endless hills. There’s not many green spaces or parks, and for older children, few museums or activities designed for or appealing to kids. It’s the people that make the city welcoming to children. I can’t walk down the street without a chorus of “Maşallah” (bless you) and “çok güzel” (how cute!). Crowds form around us in stores of people wanting to kiss the baby, ask questions about her, and give me advice (this is when my limited Turkish is a blessing and I can just smile and nod). Waiters in restaurants coo over her and offer to hold her when I go to the bathroom (note: I’m hyper-aware of being a disturbance for other diners and will always take her out if she starts to fuss). As much as she is adored, the feedback isn’t always positive. Some older Turks don’t believe young babies should be out in public and think mothers should follow the custom of staying in the house for the first 40 days (our pediatrician says it’s fine to go out and we’ve taken her places nearly every day since she was born). Despite the current 100 degree heat, I’m warned against holding the baby near a fan, in air conditioning or even in front of the refrigerated case in the grocery store, lest she catch a draft.
Even before the baby arrived, Turks go above and beyond to make mothers and babies comfortable. Recently, a Turkish woman told me how she had been heavily pregnant in winter and one day found herself out in the rain, unable to get a taxi home. She began to cry in frustration and a police officer stopped to see if she was okay. She told him she was fine, just wanted to get home, so he approached a nearby taxi with two men inside, kicked them out, and gave the cab to her. I have no doubt that the ousted men were probably understanding and gracious about the situation, and the whole story encapsulates the Turkish experience for me.

In contrast, when I spent a week home in New York at five months pregnant, I was never offered a seat on the subway and struggled like everyone else for a taxi in the rain. Shortly after my visit, I read an article about a proposed official ban on food in the NYC subway (the idea has since been dismissed) with suggestions for other things that should be banned and was shocked to see a few commenters indignantly refuse to give up their seat to pregnant women. They reasoned that pregnancy was a choice and not the responsibility of society or any other passenger to cater to them. While I can understand their viewpoint, it’s so far from the Turkish mentality, I’d be hard pressed to explain it here.

While these are very extreme examples and not necessarily indicative of the average pregnant woman’s experience in New York or Istanbul, they represent two ends of the spectrum in terms of baby- or pregnant-friendliness. Consider this chart of a New York woman’s experience getting seats on the subway; while the overall results aren’t bad (just over 80% of the time she was offered a seat), it’s pretty appalling by Turkish standards. Since I began to show, I could barely step onto a bus or through the metro doors before I was offered at least one seat (and they’ll insist on it, even if I say I’m not traveling far). It’s not just on public transportation: I’ve been offered to cut in line for public bathrooms and even in line for ice cream. Several American cities like Boston and Chicago are considering or enacting rules against strollers (at least open ones) on public transportation to save space and aggravation for other passengers. When I return to New York, I’ll plan on wearing a baby sling or carrier on the subway, especially since few stations have elevators or escalators.

A few weeks before my baby arrived, I was wandering around Cihangir, a neighborhood I’d compare to San Francisco partially due its artsy, cafe-culture vibe, but mainly due to its many hills. My afternoon stroll involved many hikes up steep staircases and near-vertical sidewalks. Each time I’d pass a Turk, he would stop, watch, and wait for me to get to the top and once he saw I was okay and not about to pass out or go into labor, he’d continue on his way. Last week, I battled the same hills with a stroller and was helped by Turkish men on nearly every corner and curb.

So what makes Istanbul such a welcoming city for little ones while New York remains hostile? It’s hardly a small town, Istanbul’s official population of 13 million is nearly double that of New York and the high density doesn’t make it much less crowded. It could be the volume of children, Turkey’s birth rate is nearly double that of many western European countries and significantly higher than the United States. I asked on Twitter about what countries travelers have found to be the most baby-friendly and most hostile, and nearly all of the positive experiences were in European and Latin American countries. Writer Anita Bulan put it well when she noted that in these baby-friendly countries, kids are seen as a part of life and allowed to participate in it. I’ve seen babies out late at night with their parents in Argentina, young children at fancy restaurants in Italy, and toddlers in museums in Spain. I’ve also seen hardly any tantrums in these places. I haven’t figured out their secret yet, but I imagine it has to do with exposing them to real life from an early age. Few restaurants in Istanbul have a kid’s menu but nearly every place will happily provide something appealing to a child, even if it’s not on the menu. If a baby cries, the parents as well as strangers will quickly comfort him and return to their meal practically before anyone else can notice.

This week I applied for my baby’s first passport and am planning travel in Europe and home to the US in the next few months. I’m not sure what to expect in each place, we might continue to be treated like rock stars in Europe and get dirty looks in America, or the reverse. I’m hoping my past travel experience helps me navigate airports and new cities but I’m aware of how a little one will slow me down and make me think ten steps ahead. My baby won’t remember these early trips or appreciate new places, but I hope that kindly strangers and a well-used passport for my child will make me a better mother and traveler.

Vera Alcazar Nesterov was born July 12 in Istanbul. Read her about her travels before birth and pregnancy in a foreign country in past Knocked up Abroad posts.

Staying with Friends: On the Porch in Raleigh, North Carolina

by Paul Brady on


One thing you won’t find in New York City, at least at my apartment, is a screened-in porch. But in the summer in the south, the porch is the living room, kitchen, dining room and bar, a focal point of a home to rival the greatest of fireplaces. I know because I had the pleasure of enjoying a porch for a couple of days recently in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Through my friend Rob, I’d met Tim and Susan, a couple that left New York City after about fifteen years to slow down and try their hands in the south. Like our friends in the Outer Banks, they were standard bearers for North Carolina’s wonderful brand of hospitality, immediately shuffling us out to the porch, plopping us down in chairs and handing us frosty beers plucked from an ice chest. One of the greatest things in North Carolina is the beer-filled cooler that holds a prime position on porches across the state.

We talked. Rob updated his friends on news from New York and I grilled the couple on life in Raleigh and how it compares to the north, particularly because Tim will soon open his own bar near the campus of UNC. “The bottom line is, with Research Triangle Park, there is this really well-educated community and an awfully diverse community here,” he says. “My thing is that there’s a phenomenal number of ‘classic American’ bars but there aren’t really a phenomenal number of bars that have been influenced by Europe. And it’s not that I want to create a ‘European bar’ but there are a lot of things that the Europeans get right with bars,” like lighting, music, ambiance and drink selection.

Tim’s new spot should be, like his porch, a great place for gathering. The idea of televisions in pubs is repellant to the long-time bartender, a pointless intrusion on the real reasons for going out: the people and the booze and sometimes the food. Construction at his place is still underway, but he’s already found that the business of building a restaurant in Chapel Hill is, in many ways, much easier here than in New York City. Rent is cheaper, of course, but so are construction costs, contracting fees and permits. Bureaucratic headaches are nothing compared to what restaurant owners confront up north. It’s the kind of place, says Tim, where he can actually open his own business; that wasn’t a certainty in his former hometown. (He also has more room in his house for power tools now.)

Critically for the area restaurant scene-if not his place-the local products are good, says Tim: “There is some very good beer being brewed in North Carolina. I was shocked to say so when I moved but there’s some fabulous beer being brewed down here.” Lonerider’s Shotgun Betty and Foothills Pilsner from Salem, North Carolina are a couple of his favorites. 3 Cups, a Chapel Hill gourmet shop, stocks plenty of international groceries and wines, but its event program is all about local chefs and farmers. “There is good food here,” Tim says. Much of it is on view at the Raleigh Farmers Market, which has so much to offer that it’s open daily.

While his future bar is across “The Triangle” from the capital, Raleigh’s downtown alliance is encouraging development in the heart of the city, where there’s already a healthy dining and nightlife scene. Poole’s Diner is a foodie favorite occupying a restored luncheonette, bustling until the wee hours as friends finish that last bottle of wine and linger over dessert. The chef there, Ashley Christensen, is embarking on a new triple-concept restaurant, adding to the offerings in downtown with Beasley’s, Chuck’s and an as-yet-unnamed bar. It’s not just eating and drinking: The Contemporary Art Museum opened earlier this year in a converted warehouse on West Martin Street.

The nerve center of it all is Morning Times, a killer coffee shop where friends bump into friends by coincidence and everyone seems to greet the baristas by name. Tables line the street, occupied by couples reading the paper and neighbors “visiting,” that southern form of chatting that makes a conversation much more than just small talk. There are salads and sandwiches and wraps to order, sure, but the egg and cheese biscuit is what you really want for breakfast (and probably lunch too).

For all the positives, development work continues, as The Raleigh Connoisseur blog, which tracks downtown news and notes, describes in its mission statement:

Transit, urban planning, and land use are new problems that we will face as the city grows. What will downtown’s role be in all of this? I am trying to follow Raleigh’s attempts at bringing back the urban center it once had in the early 1900s.

Indeed, in this growing city and metro region, sprawl could be public enemy number one, with engineers commuting to RTP, suburbanites driving downtown for a night out or an entrepreneurial bartender living in Raleigh opening his place in Chapel Hill. All the driving makes economic sense now, but will it still as the population continues to grow-and gas prices keep rising?

Cleveland’s food trucks driving dining innovation

by Paul Brady on

A group of pioneering Cleveland cooks is taking advantage of a new government policy initiative to spur the growth of their small businesses. As of this summer, food trucks will be allowed into downtown Cleveland, thanks to a temporary ordinance that lets them serve curbside in a part of the city previously closed to them.

Credit for Cleveland’s rapidly growing truck scene is due to Chris Hodgson, the owner of Dim and Den Sum, who’s on the roster for Food Network’s second season of The Great Food Truck Race, which premiers August 14. (The show is in the process of being filmed, and the gossip around the city is that he’s one of the two finalists, if not the winner.)

So I hit the streets to map the food truck landscape.

Traveling the American Road – Cleveland’s Food Trucks


Hodgson started his truck before being joined by three others, StrEat Mobile Bistro, UmamiMoto and Jibaro, that form a sort of core-four food trucks in Cleveland. Zydeco Bistro, out of Wadsworth, Ohio, and the truck from Cleveland’s Fahrenheit restaurant round out the offerings, with Traveling Treats and Oh! Babycakes driving dessert.

But there’s no innovation without growing pains, it seems, as brick-and-mortar restaurants have taken to the local press to voice concerns about their own business interests. One pizzeria claims its business is off 25 percent. But food truck crews say there’s room for everyone.

Chef Oleh Holowatyj, who we spoke to in front of Dim and Den Sum as it was parked on Ninth Street Street, voiced a common refrain: “You’re not going to pass up a sit-down dinner for a $7 taco.”

Jeffrey Winer of StrEat credited the city council for creating opportunities for entrepreneurs when I talked to him on East 12th Street. “Councilman Cimperman, who is the councilman for downtown, has really gotten behind us. I think he really understands that food trucks aren’t a danger to any restaurant. We’re actually going to bring more people to the area.”

At least one traditional restaurateur is hanging his hopes on Clevelanders love of eating out. Jonathon Sawyer, who already operates the wildly popular Greenhouse Tavern, will open Noodlecat this summer. The ramen-and-Japanese steamed bun house will be downtown on Euclid Avenue, a stretch known as much for empty storefronts as exciting dining.

Says Chef Sawyer about the neighborhood, “The thing that East 4th has that most other streets in Cleveland don’t have is that the landlords own, from end to end on that block, every single storefront, even going [west] toward Public Square on Euclid. So we get a sense of community.” He credits, as does StrEat’s Winer, the work of Joe Cimperman, a city councilman that’s helped the industry-on wheels or otherwise-thrive downtown.

The combination of innovative offerings and experimental policy making is turning Cleveland into a dining destination-and building the economy, Sawyer says. “We’re not necessarily as dense as San Francisco or Chicago or New York City, but we have the raw products and the talented chefs to really elevate our terroir to be much more than it is right now. If we keep having awesome customers and people keep paying attention to us, there’s a lot more that Cleveland can do.”

The Detroit Dining Scene: An Interview with Chef Steven Grostick

by Paul Brady on

Chef Steven Grostick has never worked in a kitchen outside of Michigan. It’s a remarkable accomplishment in an industry focused on apprenticeships in France, Italy, Japan, on jumping from stove to stove in New York City, on doing a turn at a resort in Arizona. Staying in-state has let him amass a network of purveyors, and he’s calling in favors from as many as he can at his year-old restaurant Toasted Oak in Novi, a growing, mostly white town halfway between Ann Arbor and downtown Detroit. I sat down in his restaurant’s bustling lounge to catch up and gauge the temperature of eating out in the area.

“I was born and raised here, and with the way the economy’s been, and the way the dining scene is, I’ve always said that Michigan is not a dining state,” Grostick tells me. “Nobody says ‘Hey, let’s go to Detroit to eat,’ not like Chicago or San Francisco or Vegas. But we’re such a food state in the fact that we’ve got the five Great Lakes, we’ve got all the fresh seafood, we’ve got awesome amounts of farms here.”

So what’s happening with Michigan farming?

“There are some really, really awesome things that are going on in Northern Michigan. I’m a part of the Northern Michigan Small Farms Conference. They do sustainable farming, and there’s a farmer up there called Paul May-he’s up in Frankfort, Michigan-and he started this really cool system where he gets these barren plots of land, takes it over and he splits it up into 52 sections. In the first section he lets cows go in and graze, and then the chickens come in, and then the pigs come in and root up the soil, BOOM, now you’ve got refreshed land to farm in.”

What are some difficulties with Michigan farming, besides of course the weather?

“The hardest part has been sourcing things because when you run a restaurant, you go to a small farmer, say a chicken farm, and I get all geeked up and say, ‘Oh yeah, I want to put your chickens on the menu.’ And so they go ‘Okay, how many do you want?’ and I say, ‘Can you give me 50 a week?’ You never hear from them again. So I’ve kinda changed my approach when it comes to this. Now it’s, ‘Well, what can you give me? What can you supply me with?’ So I might not put that particular farm on my menu if they can’t produce what I need, but I’ll use it as a special and say ‘So-and-so’s chicken’ or ‘Wordhouse Farms pork tenderloin’ if I only have a short supply.”

What’s the concept behind Toasted Oak?

“The idea of Zingerman’s Deli is actually part of what I wanted to do-I wanted to bring that concept here with the deli cases and things. I ran a fine dining restaurant for many years and I realized that fine dining is kind of dead. It’s got its place out there but you can’t survive on just fine dining.”

What’s the vibe at your restaurant?

“The guests want that chef-that white coat [as he grabs his own white jacket]-walking out and talking. So I encourage all my cooks and sous chefs to know our guests and our customers.”

I hear you’re going to the James Beard House in New York, the fancy foodie HQ that invites rising star chefs to cook for the NYC food world. What’s on the menu?

“I cook Michigan, and that’s exactly what I call my menu for James Beard, ‘I cook Michigan.’ I’m taking farm raised products, Michigan wines and I’ve actually found a Michigan distillery that makes whiskey, New Holland. The hand-crafted, smaller products are always much more fun because they’re so in demand.”

What’s it like to do business in Detroit? What’s the secret to success here?

“People expect quality no matter what you’re doing. Detroit, we’re the Motor City, so whether it’s a quality car product, a quality food product or whatnot, people want value and they want quality and that’s what I like to produce.” When his restaurant won two two Best of Detroit awards from Hour Magazine, “It’s not restaurant of the year where a food critic comes in and says you’re restaurant of the year, it’s my guests, the people sitting in these seats, that say it. So that’s a really cool honor.”

What other restaurants in the city are doing great things?

“Downtown they’ve got some really cool places that have built reputations. Whether it’s in the big casinos, places like Roast or Saltwater or Iridescence, those are your higher-end restaurants. But you’ve also got Slows BarBQ, this tiny little barbecue joint.”

When I was in Chicago, a woman from Detroit told me to try a Coney dog. What the heck is that?

“One of the things I’m taking on my James Beard menu is my version of a Coney dog because New Yorkers think they invented the Coney dog because of Coney Island. Actually, it was invented here in Jackson, Michigan. It’s a Vienna all-beef frank, and there’s a chili that goes on top made from beef hearts and beef liver. That’s a Coney dog, but the Michigan dog is the same Vienna all-beef hot dog, the Coney sauce that goes over top of it and then two strips of yellow mustard and chopped onions.”

After spending your whole life in Michigan, and as a small business owner, do you still believe in Detroit?

“It takes a certain type of person. You met that person out in Chicago who told you about Coney dogs, and I bet she was proud to say she’s from Detroit. My sister lives out in Colorado Springs but she sports the Detroit Tigers cap with the D on it. She’s proud to be from here. I think us as Detroiters, we’ve been through-it’s just like that car commercial-we’ve been through hell and back. Those of us that were born and raised here, we really believe in what we do. We want to stay here, which is why I buy local. I want to keep my money in Michigan.”

Zingerman’s Deli: Is a $15 Sandwich Worth the Price?

by Paul Brady on

Everyone told me that I had to eat at Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, so I drove past Michigan Stadium and turned off Main Street, parked on Detroit Street and discovered that it’s not just a sub shop but an overflowing gourmet market that happens to serve tasty, Dagwood-sized sandwiches.

After sampling some brownies, I put in an order for a Bill’s 2 over Prime, a brisket-and-turkey-on-challah number, stacked with Vermont cheddar and slathered with yellow mustard. (I went with a crunchy “new” pickle instead of Zingerman’s classic, garlic-cured “old” pickles.) Outside, at a picnic table, sitting under an umbrella to stave off the summer sun, I dug in, hoping for a sublime sandwich experience after dropping $14.50 on my sandwich and $3.50 on a lemonade. Delicious? Absolutely. But was my lunch really worth nearly $20? I’m still chewing it over.