Mikla occupies the top floor of the Marmara Pera and has done more than any other restaurant to define what modern Istanbul cooking looks like. Mehmet Gürs, who has run it since 2005, calls the approach New Anatolian: Scandinavian technique applied to ingredients sourced from named producers across Turkey. The kitchen works to a tasting […]

La Terrasse sits on a Karaköy rooftop looking straight across the water at the old city, with the Galata Bridge below and Süleymaniye and the Blue Mosque on the skyline opposite. The menu is Mediterranean with Turkish anchoring — mezes, grilled fish, a few meat dishes — and the wine list covers Turkish producers properly, […]

Demeti is a meyhane in Cihangir, on a street quiet enough that the terrace is usable on summer evenings. A meyhane is not a restaurant in the ordinary sense: you drink rakı, you eat mezes brought to the table on a tray, and the evening lasts as long as it lasts. The mezes lean Aegean […]

An ocakbaşı is a grill you sit around: a long copper hood over an open coal fire, with stools along the edge so you watch the skewers being turned. Beyoğlu Ocakbaşı has been doing this on Kurabiye Sokak since 1993. The order runs the same way each time — cold mezes first, then hot ones, […]

Divan has been a fixture of Istanbul dining since 1956, and the Beyoğlu brasserie is its more relaxed branch — an all-day room on İstiklal where the same kitchen standards apply to a simpler menu. The range runs from Turkish classics to European brasserie dishes, and it works at any hour: breakfast, a long lunch, […]

Olive Anatolian Restaurant is at Ebusuud Caddesi No:12 in Sirkeci, on the rooftop of Hotel Yasmak Sultan. From The Soul Hotel it is about twenty minutes by tram or ferry, and both hotels belong to Yasmak Hotel Collection. It works well as the end of a day spent on the historic peninsula. The a la […]