No greater than chickpeas and blanketed with tangy yogurt and scorching spiced butter, the manti had been so good they may very well be inhaled by the dozen. My associate, Barry, and I devoured these lamb-filled Turkish dumplings, formed into cute tufted shells, at Hatice Anne Ev Yemekleri, a homey spot in Istanbul’s Kuzguncuk neighborhood.
“There are such a lot of unsung feminine cooks on this metropolis,” stated Benoit Hanquet as we saluted Merve Ataoglu, the restaurant’s kerchiefed manti maker. Mr. Hanquet, our information for a Culinary Backstreets meals tour of Istanbul, would later lead us on to Gule Kafe (fried doughnuts and crumbly sesame cookies) and Gunesin Sofrasi (a tasty mosaic of meze) — two extra institutions serving scrumptious treats and overseen by girls.
Exploring a metropolis by way of its numerous eating places is all the time rewarding. However impressed by Mr. Hanquet’s tour, I made a decision on a subsequent Istanbul go to to focus simply on kitchens run by proficient girls. For all its glamour and rising worldwide fame, Istanbul’s meals world has till just lately remained patriarchal — all dude superstar cooks and swaggering ustas (masters) presiding over conventional specialties like baklava or kebab.
“Males ran skilled kitchens, girls had been anticipated to cook dinner at house for his or her households,” the native meals media star and cookbook writer Refika Birgul advised me. “However with the rise of contemporary high quality eating tradition in Istanbul, that dynamic is lastly altering.”
Certainly. Within the decade and a half that I’ve hung out on this metropolis, I’ve seen a era of feminine cooks emerge, quietly defining Istanbul’s subtle fashion of delicacies — an idiom that always entails artistic takes on Anatolian substances resembling yogurt, tahini and pomegranate. And so, revisiting outdated favorites and trying out newcomers, I crossed town in routes lit by feminine culinary star energy.
Istanbul’s historic peninsula, town’s outdated Byzantine-Ottoman core of imperial mosques and bazaars, dominated by the magnificence of the Hagia Sophia, is vacationer central. Locals, nevertheless, barely come right here, except it’s to purchase wedding ceremony gold on the Grand Bazaar — or to dine at Giritli. This contemporary meyhane (tavern) nonetheless looks like a scrumptious discovery, even after practically twenty years in enterprise. Occupying a Nineteenth-century Ottoman mansion and idyllic backyard, Giritli is owned by the pioneering chef and restaurateur Ayse Sensilay, whose roots are in Crete (Giritli means Cretan in Turkish). Drawing on Hellenic household recipes and Istanbul’s multicultural heritage, Ms. Sensilay continuously updates acquainted flavors: Black eye peas, a standard Aegean ingredient, come unexpectedly laced with tangy dried apricot slivers; cacik, a basic yogurt dip, is filled with juicy purslane and inexperienced almonds as an alternative of the same old cucumbers.
Giritli’s prix-fixe dinner entails a constellation of meze and mains. For lunch one can go à la carte, as we did, consuming a pile of crisp fried zucchini adopted by a bowl of seafood-studded orzo pilaf — after which a grilled native bluefish known as lufer. As we completed our dessert of caramelized quince, Ms. Sensilay swept in, an arty grande dame in fashionable pink glasses.
“Once I began within the restaurant enterprise, it was so arduous for girls,” she stated.
“The brand new era is luckier. They will now get distinctive skilled coaching,” she continued. “Plus trendy meals kinds supply extra creativity — interesting to girls as a result of we’re innovators and reformists by nature.”
Prix-fixe dinner from 1,200 TL per individual, or $40; lunch for 2 round 1,800 TL.
Throughout the Golden Horn, the Beyolgu quarter has all the time been Istanbul’s get together and restaurant playground. Its present culinary star is Cigdem Seferoglu, who opened Hodan in 2021 within the basement house of a sublime 1901 constructing. With white tablecloths, an open kitchen, a tree rising from the ground and up to date Turkish artwork (together with a fantastical origami chandelier), Hodan has the air of a glamorous indoor-outdoor brasserie.
Riffs on conventional cuisines at our desk included a pomegranate and cucumber salad topped with a scoop of bracingly tart bitter cherry sorbet, and fluffy truffled taramosalata on toast. Subsequent got here grilled octopus, diced and laced with snappy inexperienced olives, and a flame-kissed pide (flatbread) topped with unctuous tidbits of kokorec (that’s, umm, roasted intestines), a gutsy homage to Istanbul avenue meals. A voluptuous tiramisu embellished with rose petals and grassy-green native pistachios noticed us off into the night time, previous the get together youngsters shuffling out and in of close by nightclubs.
Dinner for 2 round 1,900 TL.
One wouldn’t consider going for Asian meals on this metropolis. But scrumptious raw-fish dishes and robata skewers could be loved at Roka Galataport, overseen by the gifted government chef, Suna Hakyemez, a veteran of the famend Fats Duck in England.
And one night we took a scenic journey on the Bosporus water shuttle to the Bebek neighborhood, to eat at Sankai by Nagaya. This Asian newcomer was awarded a Michelin star inside eight months of its opening final March. On the Bebek Lodge, we had been handed a room key card to enter Sankai’s serene third-floor, 24-seat eating room with glittering watery vistas. In its open kitchen, the sushi shokunin (artisan) Hiroko Shibata was flashing supernatural knife abilities.
A protégé of the Michelin-starred Japanese chef and Sankai’s mastermind, Yoshisumi Nagaya, Ms. Shibata spent years touring round Japan sampling regional specialties whereas working for the Japanese navy. After an early retirement, she pursued her fish obsession within the equally male-dominated world of sushi. “Male colleagues had been so uncomfortable seeing me within the kitchen!” she recalled with amusing. “However they needed to get used to it.”
Whereas most sushi spots in Istanbul import their seafood, Ms. Shibata insists on catch that’s solely native. Our omakase kicked off with kaiseki-style morsels, together with an cute crab-and-shrimp doughnut frosted with Black Sea trout roe. The sashimi-course standouts had been alabaster petals of pristine sea bass from the Marmara Sea and buttery nuggets of palamut (bonito). From the Aegean got here the chopped fatty tuna and plump langoustines in Ms. Shibata’s elegant maki rolls.
After our elaborate chestnut dessert, we requested Ms. Shibata if she was studying Turkish.
“Largely the dangerous phrases I picked up from the fishermen,” she replied.
Tasting menus from 4,500 TL per individual.
North of Bebek, the leafy waterside enclave of Yenikoy was solely just lately a sleepy space of conventional bakeries and fish eating places with white-jacketed waiters. Now it’s a eating vacation spot, thanks partially to such female-run eating places because the Michelin-starred Araka, and the charming Apartiman, owned by the chef Burcak Kazdal and her brother, Murat. With a citrus-scented again backyard, Apartiman was transformed by the Kazdals in 2017 from an outdated condo constructing, and now it buzzes nightly with younger locals and meals business sorts. The vibe is so welcoming, strangers quickly really feel like regulars.
A former baker, shepherd and butcher who lived and labored in San Francisco and England, Ms. Kazdal has an eclectic private cooking fashion, impressed by travels, outdated cookbooks and her particular suppliers.
That fashion was on scrumptious show in our appetizers of flavorful celery root roasted with pekmez (grape molasses) and miso and brightened with pickled radishes; and within the calmly smoked horse mackerel served over borlotti beans, grapes, and jagged sourdough croutons that sopped up the nice and cozy French dressing beneath. As for the eriste (historically reduce Turkish noodles) cooked in duck inventory and topped with melting shreds of pulled duck and wedges of palate-cleansing persimmon, it’s the type of soulful consolation meals I’d welcome on daily basis.
Dinner for 2 round 2,000 TL.
Our closing cease was in Vadi, an inland district of shiny skyscrapers and megamalls, to dine at Seraf Vadi. The restaurant’s proprietor, Dogan Yildirim, is a Kurdish restaurateur so obsessive about gastronomic authenticity he stored dismissing cooks till he provided the job to his enterprise supervisor, Sinem Ozler. Ms. Ozler, who was a prodigious house cook dinner, traveled throughout Turkey to analysis regional specialties for the menu at Seraf Vadi. Therefore, the dishes on her present menu embrace Azeri hengel (floppy hand-rolled noodles with caramelized onions) from the Turkish-Armenian border, and yaglama (layers of wood-fired flatbreads moistened with tomatoe-y beef) from the central Anatolian metropolis of Kayseri.
Even such acquainted classics as dolma, icli kofte (meat-filled bulgur dumpling) and lahmacun (“Turkish pizza”) are elevated by exalted substances and a focus to element. It’s a thrill to savor these rootsy Anatolian flavors in a high-design room accompanied by distinctive Turkish wines. Sabiha Apaydin, one of many nation’s high wine specialists, created the restaurant’s 240-label listing.
“Conventional Turkish delicacies is commonly served in humble environment, no alcohol,” Ms. Ozler stated. “Right here we’re proud to present it a ravishing house it deserves.”
At Seraf Vadi, our meals journey ended with the dish that had launched it — manti, completed in a wood-burning oven for an ideal ratio of crisp dough to succulent lamb filling. It was a dish to encourage a meals pilgrimage, and a testomony to the culinary prowess of Istanbul’s feminine cooks.
Dinner for 2 round 2,200 TL. Given Turkey’s present price of inflation, all costs listed on this article are approximate and don’t embrace alcohol and repair.
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