Sanliurfa, stop for a delicious taste. It stands out for its variety, ways of preparing and preserving food, techniques, eating manners, equipment and utensils required for preparation.  Its diversity is expressed through the variety of products, interaction of cultures in history, development of new tastes. It is quite famous for livestock farming, so butter, yogurt, cheese, meat  are pretty much the basic food.
The city is famous all over Turkey for having some of the best food in Turkey. Gastronomicly speaking, it is very rich place where to taste these delicious dishes of great fame.. The cuisine is typical of the south-east; bread and meat are at the centre either kebab, cig kofte or kavurma (fried meats or liver), with lots of use of aubergine, tomato and hot pepper, including the legendary local red pepper isot * (a very dark cultivar that becomes almost black when dried). Other dishes include: the spicy appetiser çiğ köfte (in Urfa even spicier than usual), tomato kebap , Urfa Kebab, lamb kebab made with eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers , the rich sweets such as the hot butter and syrup künefe or the walnut pastry sillik; the bitter Arabic-style coffee mırra and the coffee-like drink made from terebinth menengiç kahvesi.

The legend of isot goes that during the French occupation in the 1920s the people of Urfa were at first not much concerned about the town being invaded or losing their homes and only began the resistance when they saw the French marching in the pepper fields. Now they even make isot flavoured ice-cream.

One local tradition is the sıra gecesi, where groups of men gather at home, especially in winter evenings, to play lutes (ud or bağlama) and sing folk songs..