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.

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

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

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?

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

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

3 ***

If your home is one of these countries: Jordan, Syria, China, Turkey, Singapore, India, Russia, Georgia or Italy, then Maya and Kay’s Kitchen is an Ev Yemekleri (home cooking).  Finally giving in to their friends’ entreaties to open a restaurant, Maya and Kay have turned their hobby into a restaurant with a menu that features specialties from vindaloo to stroganoff to falafel, although, despite one of the partners being English, it will be winter before Brits can indulge their food homesickness*.  Regular research trips abroad to learn the intricacies of the dishes mean that the varied menu is not the hotch-potch, hit and miss affair of so many restaurants that aim to please all and succeed only in offending many.  The most recent trip to Syria brought back the Syrian falafel (chick pea – the Jordanian version uses fava beans) and they’re not even passing the costs of all the travel onto the customer – the most expensive dish is 13ytl

The evolving menu includes dishes with such rare finds as lemon grass, which they grow themselves, and salmon, which they smoke themselves.  That’s cooked smoked salmon by the way although you might miss that when skimming the menu past the smoked salmon tortellini with cumin and tomato or the salmon with ginger dressed salad.   Mantı, dumplings and tortellini are well represented, essentially the same things but differing only in shape, with all the expected fillings as well as more original ones like smoked aubergine.  Items are trialed on a specials menu or discarded if not adding anything, for example a Jordanian corn fried bread that Kay herself warned me was bland.  She was right and I was left feeling over-carbed until the evening.

Crispy spring rolls with noodles inside were a great way to scoop up the tinglingly spicy chilli dipping sauce; creamed fish parcels (tortellni-esque) with cream and lime sauce were full of texture and subtle sweetness from the limes; tandoori chicken salad was comfortingly pink showing off the spices it was marinaded in but the salad could have been a bit more interesting; a huge slice of Death by Chocolate truffle tart was very dark, very rich and very big but would have benefitted from a crunchier base.  Drinks round off the home kitchen, home made blackcurrant juice and ginger lemonade, and your bill still won’t reach Istanbul inflated levels for international cuisine.

Starters 2-7ytl

Mains and salads 7-13ytl

French press coffee 4ytl

*Psst…fish and chips and apple crumble coming soon!

0212 249 0679

Open daily 11-11.  No alcohol

Woku

5 *****

This is not a review, it’s a celebration.  Finally, an Asian restaurant in Istanbul that knows there’s more to Asian cuisine than simply throwing in soy sauce.  For noodle and spice starved residents, who know their soba from their udon, Woku is like coming home.  A mix and match menu of Asian fusion ingredients means you choose your noodles, 6 kinds, or rice, add up to 4 vegetables, meat, shrimp or tofu and finish off with one of the 8 resoundingly authentic sauces. 

The Thai restaurant owner, Canatda, lets people choose their combinations themselves to encourage a market typically nervous of Asian food but, when she gets someone who’s more familiar with the tastes of Far Eastern cuisine, she steps in with recommendations.  Coloured sauces with the white noodles, shrimps with rice noodles, soba with black sauces.  Of the 3 we tried her combinations and suggestions where much better than ours and even the smell as it came to the table was the real thing.

The food doesn’t need any frills or fancy surroundings, and the main business is done in take-away.  Even dining in situ in the small Asian lokanta, your food will come in American style, cardboard take-out boxes.  Stymied in her efforts to import the boxes, Canatda designed and created them herself and believes the food tastes better from them than it does on plates.  If a customer insists, they can have a plate – and a fork if they can’t handle chopsticks.  As if anyone that reads Time Out would shame themselves in that way!

Reminders of how Asian food tasted in life BT (Before Turkey) are in the fried egg that comes in the base noodle mix; the lemon juice squeezed over the peanut sauce; the rice noodles cooked with a special method to ensure elasticity not mushiness; Chinese style dumplings that aren’t soggy; hot sauce that actually tastes of chilli; spring rolls that, despite their yufka handicap, are so thin and crispy, with a secret ingredient in the filling, that they’re called Spring Rolls on the menu in both languages rather than ‘Çin börek’.  Characteristic of Woku is the idea that Turkey has had Asian food mis-marketed at it for too long.  Time to learn the differences so they can be appreciated, for example, soba noodles (buckwheat) are not described as kepekli (wholemeal).  Although there are two Western desserts on the menu, the pineapple and banana fritters with sesame seeds and honey are far too good to pass over for Tiramisu.  Especially the bananas were hot, sweet, sticky and with none of the breadiness that other Asian restaurants seem unable to avoid. 

The restaurant’s motto is ‘Fresh, Fast and Healthy’ and it delivers on all three.  No more than four minutes of wok time means that food came quickly and wasn’t greasy. If you live in the golden triangle of Bebek, Levent and Etiler, the paket service is available, for the rest of us it’s a short walk from Akmerkez to Asia. 

Noodle base 6.90-14ytl, additions 1-6ytl; side dishes 7.50-13 ytl; desserts 5.50-7ytl.

Yildiz Çiceği Sok. No 2/E, Etiler

0212 265 0889, Takeaway service 0212 265 0999

Mon-Sat 10-12am, Sun 12-12am, No alcohol.

2 **

Nothing sets the nerves atingle quite like the chance discovery of a new ethnic restaurant in Istanbul, no matter how many times you’ve been sucked in before. To sit outside a cafe soaking up the meyhane atmosphere of Asmalımescit (Asmalımescit Mahallesi Sofyalı Sokak No: 24))
but with a dish of noodles….Ah, how international. First impressions promised much; a menu where nothing was over 13ytl and 4 dishes sporting a Beware Chili label. A slight dip in confidence at the realisation that there’d be no beer to wash down the Chinesefest but we dared to order two of the fabled spicy dishes, the hot and sour soup, and the Manchurian Chicken.

The soup got off to a good start, it boded well enough to cover the yufka wrapped spring rolls’ (are paper thin spring roll wrappers really so bothersome to import?) average performance. Ginger vegetable salad with sesame seeds took up the baton and ran with it past the tasteless Chinese soy vegetable salad. But the Manchurian Chicken limped home in last place. It managed to activate not a single one of the tastes, not sweet, not sour, not salty and not spicy and the chicken was tender to the point of deep suspicion and could have been quorn or some other fungal meat substitute.

There was only one dessert option and, suckers to the last, we tried the fried icecream. İt was a hollow ball of too thick batter with a kernel of icecream remaining; there is a real art to this dessert’s cooking time that was totally missed. Served with fake tasting strawberry sauce, it coated the teeth and left an impression that lasted way longer than the meal.

The low prices come with small portions so you’d need to order a few to be full, which increases the probability of getting ones with flavor. It’s a shame the genius that inspired the restaurant’s gloriously un PC logo doesn’t extend to the food.

Open daily, no alcohol

3.5 ***

For the 3 weeks that this new café restaurant has been open, other establishments must have been beside themselves after they nabbed the only terrace in Tünel Meydanı (İstiklal Cad. No: 261, Beyoğlu,0212 245 7025). A fairly unassuming downstairs floor leads up to a third floor terrace looking onto sunset over the golden horn without the prices that normally goes with it. It must be the only place in Istanbul with a view and an 8ytl Turkish breakfast platter.

A mainly organic menu of Turkish standards, like kebab, köfte and döner (lunchtimes only) with enough European dishes to fit its café vibe is enhanced by touches like the 12 different kinds of homemade breads, rotated daily and all freshly squeezed juices.

The minestrone soup was chunky farmhouse style, filling enough for a light lunch if accompanied by the much anticipated bread, a cake-like cheese and caramelized onion still warm from the oven. If Istanbul dwelling steak fans can actually remember the options other than well done, they’ll be gratified not only at being asked how they would like it, but also at getting what they asked for. A medium rare sirloin in peppercorn sauce and mash was a simple dish, reassuringly pink. Three cheese pasta with walnuts also pleased with its al dente texture. Rather than attempting innovation in the European sections the chef is clearly aiming for quality over flashiness.

Some hints of originality evidence themselves in the house Ayran, with mint, cucumber and basil. It was a drink that required some time to ponder before returning a positive verdict. Long enough for me to insist that surely the cucumber made it Cacık, not Ayran, and for my assertion to be politely, but equally as insistently, rebutted. I kept quiet and drank my less controversial, refreshing, homemade lemonade.

Quickly passing over the Turkish milk based desserts looking for the real stuff, we chose pear and apple crumble and a flour free, warm chocolate cake. The former had a disappointingly cardboard flavor topping. It tasted like it must be good for you and needed a lot more sugar for crunch and indulgence. Points were more than retained by the half melted, half fudgy chocolate cake that managed to be light without losing any chocolatey-ness.

No alcohol yet, they are in the process of getting the licence to allow you to linger on the terrace with a glass of wine. Open daily 8-12.

Sandwiches 3-7ytl
Mains 6.50-17ytl
Pasta 8.50-13.50ytl
Salads 4-13.50
Desserts 4.50-7ytl