Turkey’s New Culinary Delights

  • Alancha's, seasonal, locavore menu includes dishes like this one: grilled wild purslane with smoked goat's cheese, strawberry vinegar, and spring flowers.

    Alancha's, seasonal, locavore menu includes dishes like this one: grilled wild purslane with smoked goat's cheese, strawberry vinegar, and spring flowers.

  • Can Ortabas on the grounds of his Urla Winery, pictured with sommelier Can Bayrasa and Alancha's Kemal Demirasal (far right).

    Can Ortabas on the grounds of his Urla Winery, pictured with sommelier Can Bayrasa and Alancha's Kemal Demirasal (far right).

  • Chef Mehmet Gurs in the dining room at Mikla, with a block of Divle cave-aged cheese from Karaman province.

    Chef Mehmet Gurs in the dining room at Mikla, with a block of Divle cave-aged cheese from Karaman province.

  • Gurs's version of lakerda, or bonito pickled in salt and raki.

    Gurs's version of lakerda, or bonito pickled in salt and raki.

  • Duck pastrami served with raki-scented melon at Gile.

    Duck pastrami served with raki-scented melon at Gile.

  • Kofte ekmek, a street-style dish of meatballs and bread, gets a gourmet twist at Gile.

    Kofte ekmek, a street-style dish of meatballs and bread, gets a gourmet twist at Gile.

  • Chefs Uryan Dogmus and Cihan Kipcak at Gile.

    Chefs Uryan Dogmus and Cihan Kipcak at Gile.

  • The timber-floored dining room at Gile.

    The timber-floored dining room at Gile.

  • Rooftop restaurant Mikla affords views across the Golden Horn to Topkapi Palace and the sixth-century Hagia Sophia.

    Rooftop restaurant Mikla affords views across the Golden Horn to Topkapi Palace and the sixth-century Hagia Sophia.

  • A wall sculpture at Mikla.

    A wall sculpture at Mikla.

  • Chef Maksut Askar focuses on endangered heritage foods at his just-opened locavore restaurant Neolokal.

    Chef Maksut Askar focuses on endangered heritage foods at his just-opened locavore restaurant Neolokal.

Click image to view full size

From Istanbul to Alaçati, ingredients-driven chefs are putting a new spin on local produce and propelling Turkish cuisine into the spotlight in the process.

By Leisa Tyler
Photographs by Mehmet Ateş

Five years ago Tangor Tan, a Turkish anthropology graduate with a woolly beard and a passion for food, embarked on a mission to collect and document the most authentic ingredients his country had to offer. He traveled 108,000 kilometers, visited 374 villages, accepted 7,045 cups of tea, and sampled 950 different cheeses, 550 olive oils, and 310 types of honey. Sponsored—and at times accompanied—by half-Finnish, half-Turkish chef Mehmet Gürs, Tan climbed to the top of Mount Ararat “to eat the wild flowers,” scoured the rugged Black Sea coastline for anchovies, and tramped the fertile fields flanking the ancient Asia Minor cities of Ephesus and Pergamon, where wild herbs, olives, and tomatoes grow in abundance.

Tan and Gurs collected more than 5,000 products (and the stories behind them) on their travels, including rare treasures like aged goat’s cheese made by an 85-year-old man in Izmir and olives the color of raw artichoke from Hatay province in the southeast. Much of what they found had never before made it beyond the bounds of their respective villages. Each was sent to a laboratory in Istanbul set up especially for the project to be analyzed, documented, and then—if the item was exceptional—integrated into the nightly degustation menu at Mikla, Gürs’s celebrated fine-dining restaurant in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district.

The results, now being assembled into a book, are all part of Gürs’s grand plan to put Turkey’s bountiful pantry back on the world map. “Turkey has an incredibly rich cuisine. It was the cradle of civilization, so many cultures passed through here. Yet what the world knows is kebab,” says Gürs, a tall and tattooed 45-year-old with that Scandinavian style of can-do confidence.

Gürs has been pushing the envelope for Turkish products since 2007, when I first met him. Back then, Mikla, a glamorous space atop the Marmara Pera Hotel with bare wooden tables huddled around a glass kitchen and jaw-dropping views of the Golden Horn through floor-to-ceiling windows, served modern French food with mostly Turkish ingredients, plus the odd luxury import like foie gras or caviar. These days, Mikla’s kitchen uses only homegrown ingredients in its strictly Turkish dishes, like lakerda, a soft and fatty fillet of bonito pickled in salt and raki and then mixed with sour yogurt and cucumber. Black Sea anchovies—hamsi—are flattened onto wafer-thin slices of bread, fried in butter, and served with a piquant lemon sauce. Salted and dried beef tenderloin is teamed with hummus and a pistachio paste from Gaziantep in the southeast, among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. A gutsy raw goat’s cheese that tickles the tongue is drizzled with a honey that tastes like almonds.

Gürs calls his cuisine New Anatolian, and it’s fast gathering a following. Perhaps it’s prompted by the success of Tan’s project and the opportunities it presents for new tastes and textures. Perhaps it’s being spurred by the indigenous-ingredient trend that is sweeping countries like Peru, Sweden, and now Brazil. Or perhaps because of both, a clutch of young, energetic Turkish chefs have come to the fore, eager to take their food to the next level.

“It’s still Turkish cuisine, just redefined,” says Maksut Aşkar, the affable TV chef and owner of Neolokal, a newly opened restaurant inside nearby Karaköy’s contemporary art museum and research space, Salt Galata. “Turkish people always romanticize about going back to the village, back to the farm, back to the seaside. We know it’s an optimistic ideal that probably won’t happen, so instead we bring the flavors of their childhood back to them, but in a modern form.”

Share this Article

Related Posts

5 Easy Ways to Stay Healthy When Traveling

While traveling is often used as an excuse to indulge, staying fit and fresh throughout your trip re...

Tosca Brings Italy’s Niko Romito to Hong Kong

Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong brings Niko Romito of Michelin-starred Ristorante Reale to the city in the ch...

Culinary Options Aplenty at Qatar International Food Festival

The annual Qatar International Food Festival is your chance to sample the country's diverse culinary...

New Festival in Singapore to Highlight Films on Food

Aside from a wide selection of food-focused films, FoodCine.ma will also showcase the Southeast Asia...

A Quick Guide to Bodrum, the Jewel of the Turkish Riviera

From the sea, the Bodrum Peninsula makes a fine sight: a rocky swath of sandy beaches and cypress tr...

Singapore Cocktail Week Returns Bigger, Better

Riding on the success of its inaugural program 2015, Singapore Cocktail Week is back even bigger and...