For early traders, Gaziantep was famous for pistachio nuts, and it still is. The city is at the heart of Turkey’s pistachio-growing region, even staging the International Pistachio Festival of Culture and Arts every September.

Those same early traders had an insatiable taste for baklava, the sweet pastry delicacy that can be found in cafés and bakeries across a huge arc of Central Asia and the Middle East.

Toward the end of the 19th century, someone had the bright idea of putting the two together: pistachio nuts and baklava. And so the famous Antep baklava was born. It is so popular that people travel from across Turkey specifically to tour Gaziantep’s many baklava eateries. There are more than 500.

One famous local bakery, Fethullah Usta Baklava, even flies its freshly made baklava from Gaziantep to its branch in Istanbul every morning. But aficionados contend that something is lost in transportation. Baklava always tastes best when eaten in Gaziantep.