Maya and Kay’s Kitchen

 

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!

Yeniyuva Sokak 20A, Cihangir, Beyoğlu

0212 249 0679

Open daily 11-11.  No alcohol

 

Woku

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.

Fastwok – another pseudo chinese

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

Tünel Lokantası

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

Caretta – How profiteroles should be done

5 *****

If you don’t work in one of its towering urban bee hives, you might not find many reasons to get off the metro at Gayrettepe. But all those executives have to eat somewhere, so there are some surprisingly good quality restaurants, of which Caretta (Keskin Kalem Sokak, No: 47, Esentepe
0212 2886593) is my favourite.

Based around a Mediterranean menu, but featuring some more Turkish items, Caretta offers salads, pasta and risottos as sections in their own right rather than one off alternatives to meat based dishes. Daily specials add to an already impressive menu, of which the seasonal grilled vegetable salad with tomato sauce is perfectly presented, and almost as perfectly grilled apart from the onion; the vegetable risotto has bite although needs a bit more salt; the daringly successful crab and shrimp spring rolls with pear and ginger compote; seabass wrapped in a kind of rosti and fried is a novel take on fish and chips, if only they knew it .

Carretta’s shiny, shiny star is its desserts. The crisp, ice cream filled profiteroles with plate lickingly good chocolate sauce make İnci’s even more criminal. Only after four visits, did I manage to break the enchantment of its chocolatey witchcraft for the soufflé, also almost excessively good

Catering to an international and, probably, very picky customer, Caretta knows that class is in the details. The three sectioned walnut, olive and sesame bread roll that appears as you are ordering is as tempting an entrée as anything on the menu. Waiters manage to be unobtrusively ever present, fortunately, as, packed during the lunchtime trade but almost empty outside of office hours, it could be a little unnerving when you are the only diner.

Starters: 12.50-24.50 for seafood platter
Salads:7.50-24.50
Pasta/Risotto:12.50-24.50
Mains:19.50-24.50
Desserts:5.50-8.75
Wine:9.50-17 per glass, wide range of wines available by the bottle

Zazie

Zazie

5 *****

Zazie, recently crowned Time Out Food and Drink Award’s Best New Restaurant, is one of those places that, the minute the doors swish shut and you enter the intimately lit bar, transports you to Any European Cosmopolitan City. Was it packed out on a Monday night because it has just won or did it owe its award to having already gained that level of popularity in the short months it’s been open? The rare call of the lesser spotted Cocktail Shaker and a sighting of a Mojito with actual limes, were the first signs it might be the latter.

The mainly Italian and French inspired menu posed a more challenging decision than some Istanbul restaurants of this level. A wide choice of salads with genuine originality, like orange and grapefruit segments with goat’s cheese, endive and rocket, dueled for my attention with two pages of Zazie’s speciality, thin crust Italian style pizzas, and a pasta dish that used Amaretti in the sauce.

The cream of tomato soup was so tomato-ey the smell wafted all the way across the table and tasted better than any fresh tomatoes I’ve ever had. My Auckland pizza (pesto, mushrooms, mozzarella, rosemary and garlic potatoes with sour cream and caramelized onions) was as impressive as it sounded and, once again, its arrival was heralded by a swoon making aroma. Salmon teriyaki with zucchini mash and the ginger, soy and garlic beef with rice, as the token Asian options were less interesting and, ultimately, not really necessary as Zazie’s European dishes are the real draw.

Desserts proved equally tempting. Feeling two pizzas in one meal might have been a bit excessive, a chocolate calzone pizza seemed a task to be saved for another visit. The lighter sounding apple, almond and biscuit crumble was perfectly sized to satisfy a sweet tooth and the waistline that goes with it.

Service, whilst friendly, was a little reminiscent of students on their Saturday job. Three waiters/greeters cluttering up the doorway as I arrived neither waited on me nor greeted me, leaving me standing for the first few minutes. My non drinking prompted the waiter to interrogate my friends as to why not, and he was also concerned the dessert we chose wouldn’t be large enough for us. Whether this implied we were big lard asses or skinnies that wanted fattening up, I wasn’t sure. However, I expect to be back to find out.

Wine at 8-17ytl per glass, depending on origin, up to a 350 ytl bottle of champagne.
Pasta 8-26 ytl.
Pizza 17-25 ytl.
Mains 21 to 32 for steak.
Desserts 11-16.

Atiye Sokak Ak Apartmanı No:7/2 Teşvikiye
0212 231 6922.
Open everyday, except Sunday, from 11:00 a.m. to midnight.