No bigger than chickpeas and blanketed with tangy yogurt and sizzling spiced butter, the manti were so good, they could be inhaled by the dozen. My partner, Barry, and I devoured these lamb-filled Turkish dumplings, shaped into cute tufted shells, at Hatice Anne Ev Yemekleri, a homey spot in Istanbul’s Kuzguncuk neighborhood.
“There are so many unsung female cooks in this city,” said Benoit Hanquet as we saluted Merve Ataoglu, the restaurant’s kerchiefed manti maker. Hanquet, our guide for a Culinary Backstreets food 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 more establishments serving delicious treats and overseen by women.
Exploring a city through its diverse restaurants is always rewarding. But inspired by Hanquet’s tour, I decided on a subsequent Istanbul visit to focus just on kitchens run by talented women. For all its glamour and rising international fame, Istanbul’s food world has until recently remained patriarchal — all dude celebrity chefs and swaggering ustas (masters) presiding over traditional specialties like baklava or kebab.
“Men ran professional kitchens; women were expected to cook at home for their families,” local food media star and cookbook author Refika Birgul said. “But with the rise of modern fine dining culture in Istanbul, that dynamic is finally changing.”
Indeed. In the decade and a half that I’ve spent time in this city, I’ve seen a generation of female chefs emerge, quietly defining Istanbul’s sophisticated style of cuisine — an idiom that often involves creative takes on Anatolian ingredients such as yogurt, tahini and pomegranate. And so, revisiting old favorites and checking out newcomers, I crossed the city in routes lit by female culinary star power.
Giritli
Giritli, a modern tavern in Istanbul's historic core, blends Cretan heritage with local flavors. Chef Ayse Sensilay crafts innovative dishes like black-eyed peas with apricot slivers and seafood orzo pilaf. With a nod to progress, she champions women in the culinary world, embodying resilience and creativity in her gastronomic endeavors.
“When I started in the restaurant business, it was so hard for women,” Sensilay said.
“The new generation is luckier. They can now get exceptional professional training,” she continued. “Plus, modern food styles offer more creativity — appealing to women because we are innovators and reformists by nature.”
Hodan
Across the Golden Horn, the Beyolgu quarter has always been Istanbul’s party and restaurant playground. Its current culinary star is Cigdem Seferoglu, who opened Hodan in 2021 in the basement space of an elegant 1901 building. With white tablecloths, an open kitchen, a tree rising from the floor and contemporary Turkish art (including a fantastical origami chandelier), Hodan has the air of a glamorous indoor-outdoor brasserie.
Riffs on traditional cuisines at our table included a pomegranate and cucumber salad crowned with a scoop of bracingly tart sour cherry sorbet, and fluffy truffled taramasalata on toast. Next came grilled octopus, diced and laced with snappy green olives, and a flame-kissed pide (flatbread) topped with unctuous tidbits of kokorec (that’s, umm, roasted intestines), a gutsy homage to Istanbul street food. A voluptuous tiramisu decorated with rose petals and grassy-green local pistachios saw us off into the night, past the party kids shuffling in and out of nearby nightclubs.
Sankai by Nagaya
In a surprising twist, Roka Galataport in Istanbul offers exquisite Asian cuisine, featuring raw-fish dishes and robata skewers overseen by talented chef Suna Hakyemez, formerly of England's renowned Fat Duck. Another culinary gem, Sankai by Nagaya in Bebek, earned a Michelin star within eight months of opening. Here, sushi artisan Hiroko Shibata, a protégé of mastermind Yoshisumi Nagaya, showcases her exceptional skills, insisting on locally caught seafood for a true taste of Istanbul. Shibata's dedication to her craft shines through in each dish, from kaiseki-style morsels to buttery bonito sashimi and elegant maki rolls, making Sankai a must-visit for discerning food enthusiasts.
A protégé of the Michelin-starred Japanese chef and Sankai’s mastermind, Yoshisumi Nagaya, Shibata spent years traveling around Japan sampling regional specialties while working for the Japanese navy. After an early retirement, she pursued her fish obsession in the equally male-dominated world of sushi. “Male colleagues were so uncomfortable seeing me in the kitchen!” she recalled with a laugh. “But they had to get used to it.”
Apartiman
North of Bebek, the leafy waterside enclave of Yenikoy was only recently a sleepy area of traditional bakeries and fish restaurants with white-jacketed servers. Now it’s a dining destination, thanks in part to such female-run restaurants as the Michelin-starred Araka, and the charming Apartiman, owned by chef Burcak Kazdal and her brother, Murat. With a citrus-scented back garden, Apartiman was converted by the Kazdals in 2017 from an old apartment building, and now it buzzes nightly with young locals and food industry types. The vibe is so welcoming, strangers soon feel like regulars.
A former baker, shepherd and butcher who lived and worked in San Francisco and England, Burcak Kazdal has an eclectic personal cooking style, inspired by travels, old cookbooks and her special suppliers.
That style was on delicious display in our appetizers of flavorful celery root roasted with pekmez (grape molasses) and miso and brightened with pickled radishes and in the lightly smoked horse mackerel served over borlotti beans, grapes and jagged sourdough croutons that sopped up the warm vinaigrette underneath. As for the eriste (traditionally cut Turkish noodles) cooked in duck stock and topped with melting shreds of pulled duck and wedges of palate-cleansing persimmon, it’s the kind of soulful comfort food I’d welcome every day.
Seraf Vadi
Our final stop was in Vadi, an inland district of glossy skyscrapers and megamalls, to dine at Seraf Vadi. The restaurant’s owner, Dogan Yildirim, is a Kurdish restaurateur so obsessed with gastronomic authenticity, he kept dismissing chefs until he offered the job to his business manager, Sinem Ozler. Ozler, who was a prodigious home cook, traveled all over Turkey to research regional specialties for the menu at Seraf Vadi. Hence, the dishes on her current menu include Azeri hengel (floppy hand-rolled noodles with caramelized onions) from the Turkish-Armenian border, and yaglama (layers of wood-fired flatbreads moistened with tomato-y beef) from the central Anatolian city of Kayseri.
Even such familiar classics as dolma, icli kofte (meat-filled bulgur dumpling) and lahmacun (“Turkish pizza”) are elevated by exalted ingredients and attention to detail. It’s a thrill to savor these rootsy Anatolian flavors in a high-design room accompanied by unique Turkish wines. Sabiha Apaydin, one of the country’s top wine experts, created the restaurant’s 240-label list.
“Traditional Turkish cuisine is often served in humble surroundings, no alcohol,” Ozler said. “Here we are proud to give it a beautiful home it deserves.”
At Seraf Vadi, our food journey ended with the dish that had launched it — manti, finished in a wood-burning oven for a perfect ratio of crisp dough to succulent lamb filling. It was a dish to inspire a food pilgrimage, and a testament to the culinary prowess of Istanbul’s female cooks. — NYT
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