Asitane: An Icon of Traditional Turkish Cuisine

It has been a while since I have last written about the gourmet options in the city. I should continue to do so with the local traditional cuisine. You could go to a nice French Bistro or an Italian Restaurant just about anywhere; but it is more rare that you find a good Ottoman Restaurant across the continent.

Asitane is one of the very best local traditional and Ottoman cuisine restaurants in the city. Unfortunately, it is not tourist free. In fact, due its location, it is almost always attractive to tourists only. For locals, who live and work farther away and towards the business, commerce and financial centers of the city, going to Asitane is not that easy given Istanbul’s traffic. Asitane is located inside the Kariye Hotel in Edirnekapi, which is kind of away from even the touristy Eminonu and Sultanahmet. Nonetheless, the food is the best you can taste in the city. To quote from 2006 October edition of New York Times:

“Under the Ottoman Empire the guilds of cooks were fiercely secretive about their culinary tricks. Consequently few recipes survive from the four and a half centuries of Ottoman rule (1453 to 1918). In a district of old houses just off a little3 square lined with plane trees, next door to one of the Byzantine churches, St. Savior in Chora, Asitane has devoted itself to the re-creation of this lost cuisine.”

Asitane Restaurant has very unique and different dishes that are still served with their traditional Ottoman names. Each season the menu changes slightly to accommodate dishes prepared from seasonal ingredients. For instance, Spinach “Piruhi” a dish from 1844 is ‘home made’ ravioli, stuffed with spinach leaves, carrots and “tulum” cheese that is served in winter only. Similarly, “Restiyye” is a dish from 1539 and is served in summers only. It is homemade vermicelli ‘a la Turka’ with ‘Tulum’ cheese, sprinkled with walnuts and chopped parsley. Other dishes including “Mutanjene” (diced lamb with dried apricots, raisins, honey and almonds, baked slowly in an earthenware casserole) and “Mahmudiyye” (Spring chicken stewed with almonds, dried apricots, grapes and flavoured with honey and cinnamon) -both from 1539- are served in all seasons.

Service is extremely polite, extremely friendly and foremost it makes one feel good that your host is not trying to rip you off. If you tell your host that you want to taste as many things as you can, but you also do not want to get stuffed to your mouth, they will prepare you a tasting meze dish or a tasting menu at reasonable prices.

Courteous service will send you away with small gifts from the kitchen; but I will leave that unannounced -so as not to ruin the suprise ;)