Atika

 

4 ****

  

The terrace of this new restaurant is its main selling point.  Which sounds like damning with faint praise, but it’s such a feature of the place that it should be on the menu.  A refurbished ex-consulate, the perfect location hiding at the back of the street facing building is a sophisticatedly opulent setting to the most gorgeous backdrop in Cihangir.  While looking at the view, scan the salads, pasta, steak and chicken dishes, nothing will jump out as blazing new culinary trails in the Istanbul café scene; a nod to the east with a salmon sashimi starter and a vegetable noodle…..the lights on the Asian shore will steal your attention again.  Who cares what you order? The head chef is Turkish champion and world number 3 International Chef Federation winner, even the staff are confident enough not to feel they need to recommend one dish over another.

 

Bosphorus starry eyed, we tried a selection of the Zeytinyağlı (olive oil cold dishes) which were firmer and crisper than can sometimes lurk under meze counters.  Homemade pasta with salmon and carrot and zucchini ribbons, cooked al dente and given bite and flavor from the vegetables was twice the size I could finish but good enough to go several mouthfuls beyond fullness.  Veal fillet mignon, with basil sauce and parmesan was typically well done with no questions asked. The dessert menu was much shorter and, although İrmik tatlısı, an orange and semolina Turkish dessert, is their most popular dish, we went for a very caramelly crème caramel with a fresh, silky texture and an average hot chocolate cake made fresh to order with a bitter chocolate taste.  Recently finalised, the liquor license means you can sit on the terrace, sip wine and drink the six star view.

 

Starters 11-14 ytl

Salads 11-13 ytl

Mains 16-24 ytl

Desserts 9-10 ytl

Wine 8-10 per glass

 

Kılıç Ali Paşa Mah., Şimşirci Sok. No: 6 D:1, Cihangir

 

0212 244 06 27 – 28

 

Open daily, 9.30 – 2 a.m.

Abracadabra

 

3 1/2 ***

 

Abracadabra, housed in a gorgeous seafront, 4 storey wooden house is a creative food company that hosts food art events and acts as a meeting point for artists. Oh, and it’s a restaurant too.  The passion the creators, Ahmet and Dilara, the inspired chef, have for food has gained them a reputation in international gastronomic circles while the Turkish celebrity circuit catches up.  No tulum cheese and walnut salads or Turk/Mediterranean menu here, this is a selection for the more adventurous diner, with foods all sourced regionally by their ‘gourmet peasant’, from Trabzon butter to village chickens to a Malatya village woman’s cheese.  Emphasis is on health and natural food that’s good for the body as well as the taste buds.  Even the ashtrays have ‘for lung cancer’ written on them. 

 

The ever evolving menu and daily specials feature shark and duck as well as more traditional things like zucchini fritters (mucver), served with suzme yoghurt so thick it was like kaymak, and fava bean puree with tahini plus twists like salmon çig köfte with lime, not as spicy as its meat counterpart.  The homemade bread that comes with your meal could be a course in its own right, fall apart corn muffin, cake-like moist seed bread and light pastries.  If anywhere is going to get me past my indifference to Turkish desserts, this is probably the place to try but not until I’ve got sick of the cheesecake soufflé, carob semi-freddo and the flour free chocolate tart, a rich, gloopy, fudgy topping with a crisp biscuity base.  I’m more skeptical about the curried banana mousse, which I’ve braved before, an ambitious venture but a bit heavy-handed on the curry. 

 

There’s a separate breakfast menu which, if you go for on Sundays will bring you to their market, sharing the unique produce that gives them the edge over any other restaurant in Istanbul.  September will see guest chefs from New York putting on 3 or 4 days of food art and also the beginning of cooking classes.  At weekends the venue continues long into the night, really, you might as well just move in.

 

Wine 8-12ytl per glass

Cocktails 20ytl

Smoothies 9/10ytl

Mezes 6-20ytl

Salads and mains12-25ytl

Desserts 7-10ytl

 

Arnavutköy Cad. No: 50/1, Arnavutköy

0212 358 6087-88

 

Open 10 -12 Tues -Thurs, weekends 10-5am

 

 

Çukurkeyif Bahce

 

3 1/2 ***

 

For the last couple of months, Çukurkeyif Bahce has been Çukurcuma’s best kept secret.  Now word of mouth has started to reach the newspapers and it won’t only be frequented by those lucky enough to have heard the whisper from someone who knows someone who’s been.  It’s so well hidden, you wouldn’t even stumble across it by chance, tucked away at the end of a little side street going down into the antique furniture district.  Well worth looking for, it is an open, vine covered garden, strewn with tea lights and lanterns, that’s a laid back daytime cafe and a relaxed, but sophisticated and intimate evening venue.

 

The  menu features some of the usual suspects in the salad and pasta lines, but the homemade ‘annemin’ (my mother’s) pasta and the surprisingly spicy Kuşka chicken, or the grilled chicken with thyme, served with fantastically garlicky crushed potatoes and bean salad (börülce) deservedly stand out.  Twice successfully ordering off-menu brought me the best risotto I’ve had in Istanbul, crisp vegetables and rice with bite, and the best grilled vegetables in Cihangir by far, proving that aubergine can be prefectly grilled without swimming in oil, served with generous slices of parmesan to complement.  Slightly marring the experience is a tendancy to overdress salads (just ask for dressing on the side instead) and pasta cooked to Turkish preferences (ask for it al dente) but, on the whole, it’s obvious the chef really cares about what he’s cooking and how it’s presented.  A dark chocolate souffle came with a strange ice cream cone construction but exploded with velvety sauce in a 2 man sized portion.  Cocktails are mixed with the same attention, with innovations like a green satsuma mojito, and frozen cocktails at Beyoğlu prices.

 

Starters 5-14 ytl

Salads, pastas and mains 8-23ytl

Desserts 7-12 ytl

Cocktails  18-23ytl

House wine 7ytl per glass

Weekdays set lunch menu of salad, main course and soft drink 10ytl.

 

Çukurcuma, Altıpatlar Sk, Altıpatlar Çıkmazı No: 4, Beyoğlu

0212 251 1193

Open daily 10-2

MuzedeChanga Reviewette

5 *****

 Art doesn’t move me much.  Three galleries of Dali at the Sabancı Museum, sketches, paintings, the great man’s life and works; where’s the restaurant? I spent longer perusing the menu at MuzedeChanga than the art.  As at Changa, the starters and desserts caught my eye more than the mains.  A beautiful fennel in olive oil dish with butter thick, fava bean puree was sweet, although not as strongly anise tasting as I was expecting. The ginger crème caramel, as rich as cheesecake without the slimy consistency that dessert can have, was generously doused with caramel and had the ginger flavour of homemade biscuits.  The 36 ytl bill was 3.6 times more than the museum entrance fee, but food is art isn’t it?

Albura

3 ***

  

Albura is best described as updated, Ottoman influenced, Turkish cuisine plus nachos for those scared of all the flavours and freshness of real Turkish food.  Which might sound disparaging but a menu that caters for kids is probably a godsend on some people’s holidays. 

 

For the rest of us, the showmanship of the Testi Kebab which is cooked in a Cappadochian clay pot, brought to the table over flames and broken open onto a plate for 2 people (42ytl),or the, better than most meyhanes, meze or mixed dolma  plates (stuffed tomato, aubergine, vine leaves, pepper) both at meal sized starter portions show off the chef’s talents.

 

A comprehensive menu of Ottoman classics like Sadrazam Sarma – chicken stuffed with Ottoman style rice- and Hünkar Beğendi – lamb served on top of pureed aubergine, and a couple of innovations, like chicken with peach and orange come in big portions often with rice, baked potato and salad on the side.  Stand out dishes were the spinach starter, with caramelized onions and peppers all flavoured with roasted pine nuts; baked lamb – fall apart tender with slightly spiced mashed potatoes, and the freshly made hummus that comes as a dip with the bread. Less interesting, the Mantı was a bit disappointing, lacking the oomph of the other dishes. Specialities of homemade rice pudding (sütlaç) and baked milk pudding (kazandibi) offer the full Turkish experience or there is a rich chocolate soufflé if you don’t mind waiting for it to be freshly made.  Some hardships are worth bearing.

 

Albura plans to hold monthly photographic exhibitions in its cosy, brick lined interior and there will be a non-smoking section in winter although the gas heaters are powerful enough to mean that smokers and non smokers should be able to dine together outside on all but the iciest of days.

 

Starters 4-17.50 ytl

Mains 10-32 ytl

Desserts 8-11 ytl

House wine by the glass, 9 ytl

 

Yeni Abıyık Cad. No: 26, Sultanahmet

0212 517 9031 – 32

 

Open daily 9-1.30

 

 

Antiochia

 

5 *****

After a while in a new country, some of us get a bit complacent and assume ourselves experts on what’s on offer culturally as well as edibly.  We’ve ventured further afield than meyhanes and Bodrum and sit comfortably on our “no longer a tourist” thrones.  So, the week I first heard there was a region called Antakya and a cuisine to go with it, was also the week I was led to pretty much the only place to try it in Istanbul.  Which is why Antiochia, nestled alongside its rowdier meyhane neighbors in Asmalımescit, seeks to educate as much as nourish.  The owner, Suleyman, is passionately devoted to bringing this ‘Antakyan concept’ to a wider audience to the point that your meal might turn into a well meant eulogy.

But, he’s right, the food might look like yet more meze and kebab. but of the seven appetizers, two excellent dishes I had never seen before – thyme and olive salad (kekik salatası) and a pepper and tomato paste with walnuts and pomegranate (muammara) – and four, including smoked aubergine and peppers and onions in oil, had elements from the Antakyan oilve oil or pomegranate extract that gave them a depth and sweetness not always found in this kind of dish.  The only possible exception was the humus which was wetter than usual but not noticeably different.  They came served with a paper thin, crispy bread (lavaş) slathered with chili which was a welcome change from baskets of white bread that you overfill on before the main course.  The choice here is şiş kebab or a spicy, sweet dürüm, the latter particularly mouthwatering.

Desserts are no less strange yet rewarding: green walnuts (ceviz tatlısı) or mini aubergine (patlıcan tatlısı) served with milk ice-cream.  Skeptical tasting of the aubergine revealed its almost fig-like sweetness. You can even have a go at recreating some of the wizardry at home as Antiochia sells its own oil, pomegranate extract, thyme salad, walnuts and aubergines in syrup along with a range of natural olive oil and herb soaps made according to traditional Ottoman methods.   But at these prices, especially with the lunchtime 20% discount, they’d be better as presents for those less geo-culinarily fortunate than us.

7 meze plate, 15 ytl; dürüm and 4 mezes, 19ytl

0pen 12-10.30pm everyday except Sunday

Open No alcohol