Istanbul · Şişli · Visited: 17 December 2022

TURK Fatih Tutak

Item: TURK Fatih Tutak
Rating: 17
Author: Kadir Akkaya

“It was my mother who taught me that food must touch the heart.”

From the chef’s handwritten card ·

17/ 20Strong one-star band

Scale definitions: rating system

I paid for this visit myself. I accepted no payment, invitation or hospitality from any restaurant.

This is a record of one visit — check with the restaurant for the current menu and prices.

Fact sheet

Chef: Fatih Tutak
Cuisine: Modern Turkish · a multisensory approach
Meaning of the name: The TURK emblem means “musk-scented”
The welcome: A handwritten card from the chef: the principle his mother taught him — food must touch the heart
Service philosophy: “A guest is invited; a customer pays.”
Kitchen discipline: There is no smoke in a Michelin kitchen
Preparation: mise en place — everything ready before service
Source recording: TURK Fatih Tutak’ta çok lezzetli bir Michelin deneyimi · 1:02:25

The team at the table

Chef: Fatih Tutak
He began cooking in Türkiye, then worked abroad for years, particularly in the Far East. The restaurant he ran in Bangkok was named one of Asia’s 50 Best.
Kitchen director: Ogün Koca
He worked in the United Kingdom for a long time.
Service: İsmail
He leaves the menu on the table and explains each dish briefly as it arrives.

The opening

You ring a bell to enter; a scent meets you in the corridor — connected to the restaurant’s name
You are escorted to the table, welcomed with a hot towel, and the menu is left with you
Inside the napkin, a card from the chef: “It was my mother who taught me that food must, above all, touch the heart.”
The kitchen’s philosophy: produce from local growers, and “a new story fed by our roots”as told by the restaurant
Aperitif: an elderflower and rose soda, with a dried rosebud inside
Palate cleanser: root vegetables, pickle brine and parsley oil, with a plum steeped in the brine
A claim to use produce from all seven regions — the evening opens with Eastern Anatolia and the Black Seaas told by the restaurant

A dish served in a ceramic vessel — a frame from the source recording — Frame from the source recordingORYD8hIZGvU · 23:15

What I explain at this table

Umami — the fifth taste beyond the familiar fourencyclopedia →
Confit — the egg held at 60 °C for a full hour; in origin a preserving methodencyclopedia →
Sous-vide — cooking in a pouch with the water held at a constant temperatureencyclopedia →
Jus — the essence left in the pan as meat cooks; thinned, it becomes a sauceencyclopedia →
Why butter turns yellow — grass-fed gives yellow, hay-fed gives white
The caviar hierarchy: beluga is king, then osetra — and caviar is farmed in Adana
Matcha — Japanese green tea ground to a powder
When ice cream arrives alongside a dessert, taste the ice cream first

Local produce

Bitlis Karakovan honey — from wild bees at 2,000 metresas told by the restaurant
Thrace kıvırcık lamb — the fat sits in the tail, and there is no muttony smellas told by the restaurant
Çayeli beans — a registered dish of Rize; the beans themselves come from İspir, Erzurumas told by the restaurant

What I saw at the table

A “cake” made entirely of mushroom — the candle on top is beef marrow
The invisible detail of service: your glass never empties, and more than one person attends each course
No metal cutlery touches the fermented items; they are served with a wooden knife to avoid bacterial growth
The restaurant’s emblem: the mark of the Yaparlı tribe of the Oğuz, found in the Orkhon inscriptions — it means “musk-scented”
The signature dish, stuffed mussels: eaten shell and all, made with tamarind, cuttlefish ink and caramelised onion juice

The kitchen tour

The evening ends in the kitchen: a farewell with treats tasted at their source

The close

“The moment I had imagined in a Michelin-starred restaurant”: Turkish tea in a tulip glass
Dessert: layers of crisp baklava pastry, milk kaymak, bergamot and matcha; alongside a goat- and cow-milk ice cream with powdered Antep pistachio
The kaymak foam is made with an N₂O cream siphon
“I could call every plate I ate a work of art” — familiar flavours, reinterpreted
An evening more charged with feeling than other starred tables; the smell of the bread and the stuffed mussels carry you back
A closing wish: that the third star will come

Corrections

In the recording I said the ice cream was made “with nitrous oxide”.

I meant liquid nitrogen. N₂O is an aerating gas: dissolved in cream under pressure, it foams on release — but it removes no heat, so it cannot freeze anything. Freezing requires taking heat away, which liquid nitrogen does at −196 °C. (The gas used for the kaymak foam that same evening genuinely was N₂O — that part is correct.)