Somer Sivrioğlu has closed his award-winning restaurant Efendy and opened an ocakbaşı, a traditional Turkish grill restaurant, in its place. What might initially seem like a move towards simplicity is, in fact, driven by a much bigger ambition: To rediscover the relationship between meat, fat and fire and the mastery born of years of repetition. Sivrioğlu no longer wants simply to make excellent kebabs. He wants to elevate the knowledge of the usta — the master craftsman we call a kebapçı — to its rightful place in the world of gastronomy
Having spent years introducing Turkish cuisine to Australia before establishing a contemporary culinary language for Anatolian food at Efendy in Istanbul, Somer Sivrioğlu is now entering a new chapter in his culinary journey. This time, however, moving forward means looking back, towards one of the oldest ways culinary knowledge has been passed down: The master-apprentice tradition. Somer has closed Efendy, where he spent five years interpreting Anatolian cuisine through the lens of a contemporary chef-driven restaurant, and opened an “ocakbaşı,” a traditional Turkish grill restaurant, called Baharat in the very same space.
Efendy had earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand, four pearls from the İncili Gastronomy Guide and two toques from Gault&Millau. From the outside, then, the decision seems genuinely radical: Why close a chef-driven restaurant recognized by prestigious gastronomic guides to become a kebab chef?
When I put this question to Somer, his answer provided the key to understanding Baharat: “I believe making a truly good kebab requires more mastery than many of the dishes we prepare in fine dining.” It sounds like a bold claim at first. But consider the anatomy of a kebab and his point becomes clearer. In fine dining, a chef has considerable room for intervention: Techniques, sauces, textures, garnishes, presentation… A kebab offers nowhere to hide behind such complexity. There is meat, fat, a skewer and glowing embers. Every decision, from preparing the meat and determining the proportion of fat to threading it onto the skewer, judging the embers, adjusting its distance from the fire and choosing the precise second to remove it, is reflected directly in the final mouthful. The fewer the ingredients, the fewer places a master has to hide.
At a time when gastronomy seems perpetually obsessed with the “new”, the idea of perfecting the same thing through thousands of repetitions feels almost radical. One remark Somer made during our conversation has stayed with me: “I love the word kebapçı. Pideci, baklavacı, kebapçı…” Each of these words describes someone who has devoted years of their life to mastering a single craft. In recent years, our conversations about gastronomy have revolved around chef-driven restaurants, creativity, signature dishes, techniques and stars. Yet there is another form of knowledge that has carried the cuisine of these lands into the present: Craftsmanship. While a chef often feels compelled to create, a master craftsman strives to perfect. One pursues the new; the other finds greater depth by repeating the same movements thousands of times. And it is precisely this depth that fascinates Somer today.
In Baharat’s kitchen, the meat comes from eight- to nine-month-old male lambs of the “Thracian Kıvırcık” breed, sourced from the northwestern province of Balıkesir. Whole carcasses are butchered in-house daily; the meat is never minced in advance but ground and threaded onto skewers only when an order is placed. Butchery and kebabs are entrusted to Tuncay Usta, while the oven and “lahmacun,” a thin flatbread topped with spiced minced meat, are the domain of Müslüm Usta, a master from the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa. Leading the kitchen is Başak Daldaban, a female chef from the southern province of Adana with a fine-dining background who has worked alongside Somer since Efendy’s very first day.
In the predominantly male world of kebab restaurants, having a woman lead the kitchen is certainly noteworthy. But to my mind, what makes Başak’s story particularly interesting is not so much her gender as the role she plays. She is not there to replace the traditional masters; she brings different forms of craftsmanship together under one roof. The master’s accumulated knowledge and the chef’s ability to build systems come together in the same kitchen. Perhaps this is where Baharat’s true modernity lies.
That is also why the menu extends well beyond the familiar Adana–Urfa repertoire. Lahmacun is made with onions in winter, fresh garlic in spring, aubergines in summer and walnuts in autumn. When “keme,” a prized desert truffle, is in season, there is keme kebab; when loquats arrive, there is loquat kebab. Because Anatolia’s kebab culture is far more deeply connected to the land and the seasons than we often realize. When we present kebab to the world as little more than minced meat threaded onto a skewer, we erase much of the story we have to tell.
One of Somer’s most thought-provoking remarks was this: “I hope that one day the gastronomic elite in this country will accord Küşlemeci Halil Usta the same respect they give Arguinzoniz.”
It is a point worth dwelling on. As the international gastronomic community has rediscovered cooking over fire, it has elevated figures such as Spain’s Victor Arguinzoniz to the ranks of the world’s most respected culinary masters. Yet in Türkiye, we have largely confined the craftsmen who have spent generations working in front of the fire to the category of “good kebab makers.” We do not extend the same intellectual curiosity to our own masters. Why should knowledge accumulated over decades — of ember temperature, the structure of meat and the behavior of fat — not become a subject of serious gastronomic study? Why do we not document a kebab master’s thirty years of experience with the same rigor we apply to the knowledge of a fire-cooking master elsewhere in the world? It is for this reason that Somer plans to invite a master from a different region to Baharat every month. The first gathering will feature Ciğerci Mehmet Usta, a renowned liver specialist from Adana.
Towards the end of our conversation, Somer told me, “I want to devote the remaining years of my career to this.” That sentence makes Baharat, to me, far more interesting than simply another new restaurant. Because the most radical change in Somer Sivrioğlu’s career is not his decision to close Efendy and open an ocakbaşı. It is his willingness, after years spent championing the role of the chef, to become an apprentice once again at this stage of his career — and to devote himself to the pursuit of true mastery.
