Ottoman Cuisine in Istanbul: Where to Dine Like a Sultan

Most of the food you eat in Istanbul is wonderful, but it is not Ottoman cuisine. It is modern Turkish: kebabs, mezes, breakfast spreads, the things every restaurant does well. Real Ottoman palace food is a different and much rarer thing. It is sweet and savoury in the same bite, slow-cooked, perfumed with cinnamon and rosewater and dried fruit, and built from recipes that were last cooked for a sultan and then forgotten for a century or two. A handful of kitchens in this city have done the archive work to bring it back, and eating at one of them is one of the most genuinely memorable meals you can have here.

This is my honest, tested shortlist of where to eat Ottoman cuisine in Istanbul, what makes each place different, and how to choose between them. If you only have one dinner to spare for it, I will tell you exactly where I would send you first.

What is Ottoman cuisine, really?

Ottoman cuisine is the food of the imperial palace kitchens, mainly Topkapı and later Dolmabahçe and the Edirne palace, refined over roughly six centuries. It pulled flavours from everywhere the empire reached: Central Asian roots, Anatolian staples, Persian and Arab spicing, Balkan and Mediterranean produce. The result is not the same as the Turkish food you get on the street.

The tells are easy to spot once you know them. Meat cooked with fruit (lamb with figs and almonds, chicken with apricots and raisins). Generous use of cinnamon, clove, mastic, saffron and rosewater. Stuffed vegetables that go far beyond the usual peppers and vine leaves. And dishes that sit happily between savoury and sweet, which feels strange for one course and then completely right for the next. If you want a wider primer on the city’s food before you book, this overview of Istanbul cuisine and what to try is a good place to start.

Asitane: the restaurant that brought it back

If you want the single most authentic Ottoman cuisine experience in Istanbul, Asitane is the answer, and it is not close. This is the kitchen that started the whole revival back in 1991, next door to the Chora (Kariye) Museum out in the old city near Edirnekapı.

What makes Asitane special is the research behind the plates. The team has dug through palace kitchen registers from Topkapı, Dolmabahçe and Edirne, and through a banquet ledger documenting the 1539 circumcision feast for two of Suleiman the Magnificent’s sons. They have archived more than 200 original recipes, and they cook them more or less as written. The famous one is the stuffed melon from that 1539 feast: a hollowed melon packed with minced meat, rice, almonds and currants, then baked. The other showpiece is mahmudiye, a chicken stew sweetened with apricots, raisins and almonds and warmed with cinnamon and clove. Both genuinely taste like nothing else you will eat in the city.

It is a trek to get out there, and the neighbourhood is quiet rather than scenic, so build it into a day that also takes in the Chora mosaics. The restaurant runs daily for lunch and dinner (closed Wednesdays at the time of writing), and live Turkish music plays Thursday through Saturday evenings. Book ahead. This is the meal I send people to first.

Matbah: Ottoman palace cuisine in Sultanahmet

If you are staying in the old town and do not want to travel, Matbah is the easy, excellent choice. It sits inside the Ottoman Hotel Imperial on a quiet lane between Hagia Sophia and the Caferağa Medrese, with a pretty garden terrace for warm evenings.

Matbah’s menu is built from research into palace cookbooks, with dishes tied to specific sultans and centuries (the menu actually tells you the era each plate comes from, which is half the fun). The dish to order is mutancana, a Süleyman-era lamb braise with honey, dried figs, apricots and almonds that is the clearest possible example of that Ottoman sweet-savoury balance. It is open every day from late morning until late, and being walkable from the main sights makes it the most convenient palace-cuisine table in the city. While you are in the area, it pairs naturally with a day around Topkapı Palace, where this food was actually invented.

Deraliye: a generous Sultanahmet feast

Deraliye, a few minutes from Matbah on Ticarethane Sokak in Sultanahmet, leans into the theatrical side of imperial dining. The menu pulls dishes from across the empire’s history, and the kitchen is happy to put together a long sharing spread that runs from mezes through tandoor-cooked goose, lamb and duck kebabs with spiced rice.

It is a touch more touristy than Asitane or Matbah, and that is fine: the cooking is solid, the staff explain every dish, and for a group who want a proper Ottoman banquet without anyone having to decipher the menu, it works really well. It is open daily, lunch through late evening.

Çiya Sofrası: not palace food, but unmissable

Now for the one that is technically not Ottoman palace cuisine but belongs on any serious list anyway. Çiya Sofrası, in the market lanes of Kadıköy on the Asian side, is chef Musa Dağdeviren’s life project: regional Anatolian home cooking, much of it recipes he collected himself from villages across Turkey, some of which existed nowhere in writing before he wrote them down. If the name rings a bell, that is because he got a full episode of Netflix’s Chef’s Table.

The format is refreshingly unfussy. You walk past a counter of seasonal stews and stuffed vegetables, point at what looks good, and pay roughly by weight. The menu changes daily with whatever is in season, so the green-plum stews of spring and the wild-herb dishes of early summer are gone by the time the next produce arrives. This is the deep, regional, peasant side of Turkish food rather than the gilded palace side, and the two together give you the full picture. It is an easy add-on to a day exploring Kadıköy’s restaurants and market, which is one of my favourite afternoons in the city.

Dining inside the palace: Konyalı and Tuğra

Two places let you eat Ottoman-style food in a genuinely royal setting, which is a different kind of treat.

Konyalı Lokantası sits inside the grounds of Topkapı Palace itself and has been serving there since 1969 (the family has hosted everyone from Atatürk to Queen Elizabeth II). The veranda looks straight out over the point where the Bosphorus meets the Golden Horn, and the menu runs classic Ottoman-Turkish dishes like hünkar beğendi and lamb tandır. There is a quick self-service side and a more formal dining room, so you can treat it as a proper lunch or a fast refuel between palace galleries. For the history behind the setting, read up on Topkapı Palace’s place in the empire before you go.

For full luxury, Tuğra at the Çırağan Palace Kempinski is the top of the market. It occupies a restored Ottoman palace on the Bosphorus in Beşiktaş, with floor-to-ceiling water views, and the kitchen draws its menu from palace archives with a modern finish. It carries Michelin Guide recommendation and three Gault & Millau toques, which tells you both the quality and the price bracket. This is a special-occasion dinner, and it sits comfortably alongside the city’s other high-end Istanbul restaurants.

How to choose, and how to order

A quick decision guide, since six options is a lot:

• Most authentic, worth the trek: Asitane.
• Best if you are staying in the old town: Matbah.
• Big sharing banquet for a group: Deraliye.
• Regional Anatolian counterpoint: Çiya Sofrası.
• Eat where the food was invented: Konyalı, inside Topkapı.
• Blow-out special occasion: Tuğra.

Whichever you pick, order at least one fruit-and-meat dish, because that sweet-savoury combination is the whole point of Ottoman cuisine and the thing you cannot get anywhere else. Leave room for dessert too, since the period sweets (rosewater puddings, candied fruits, the saffron-and-mastic things) are as historic as the mains. If this leaves you wanting to taste the rest of the country’s food, my guide to Turkish desserts worth trying and the rundown of classic Turkish mezes will keep you busy for the rest of the trip. And if you would rather chase the modern, smoky end of the spectrum afterwards, the best kebab restaurants in Istanbul are a fair distance from a sultan’s table, but no less delicious.

Reserve ahead at all of them, especially the palace settings and Asitane, and give yourself a slow, unhurried evening. Ottoman cuisine was built for feasts that lasted hours. The least you can do is not rush it.