Healthy tradition
On A hill overlooking the Bosphorus, an elegant wooden pavilion was built in 1948 as a coffee house. Recently transformed into a Turkish restaurant, it is now combined with the neighbouring Swissotel. In a spacious room, four musicians play lilting classical fasil music.
The Sark Sofrasi is one of a handful of hotel restaurants in Istanbul specialising in classic Turkish cooking. Everyone pays lip service to the notion that Turkish cuisine ranks with the best, but evidence is harder to find. Standardised menus of salads and kebabs are the norm: reliable fare, but rarely inspiring.
Turkish meals invariably begin with meze, small dishes offering a variety of flavours, densities and textures. Meze resemble tapas portions but are eaten as part of a full meal. Whether hot or cold, meze are often variations on the themes of aubergine, crushed wheat and tomato.
The meze are teased on to the fork with breads, freshly baked in Sark Sofrasi's wood-fired oven. In addition to the thick chewy pide breads, the restaurant offers a puffed bread reminiscent of an Indian puri.
Of the 15 cold and 15 hot meze, the best in my estimation were the cold aubergine purée with pine nuts and sesame; kisir, crushed wheat, highly seasoned and garnished with nuts; dolma, vine leaves stuffed with rice, onions, and pine nuts; ezme, a spicy blend of tomato, onion, green pepper, and chili (each at Trl100,000, £1.30). There is also a superb tarama (Trl150,000, £1.95), highly seasoned and light years away from the bland pink concoctions sold in British supermarkets.
Although the range of ingredients is limited, the flavours and textures are quite different, often affected by the use of nuts and spices.
Hot meze included delicious diced lamb's liver with onions (Trl120,000, £1.55); kavurmali humus, diced fillet of lamb on a bed of humus (Trl150,000, £1.95); hellim, grilled Cyprus cheese (Trl120,000, £1.55); icli köfte, minced lamb with herbs (Trl150,000, £1.95); and lahmacun, flat bread topped with minced lamb mixed with diced vegetables (Trl120,000, £1.55).
Those who find the list of 30 meze too daunting can opt for a selection of nine different dishes (Trl450,000, £5.80). The success of meze lies in the quality of the raw ingredients, especially crucial with vegetable dishes, and in the skill of the chef in providing variety.
For the kavurmali humus, for example, the aubergine paste is pounded with milk to lighten the texture.
Vegetables take a back seat to fish or grilled meats in the main dishes. The fish selection is highly seasonal, and is either grilled, baked in foil, or steamed. Grills are mostly kebabs of lamb, chicken or meat balls.
The adana (Trl240,000, £3.10), a spicy minced meat cooked on the brochette, was particularly moist and flavoursome. Other meats include a number of dishes of baked lamb (Trl250,000, £3.25), and diced chicken cooked in an earthenware dish (Trl250,000, £3.25).
Enticing desserts included apricots in cream; sütlac, a baked rice pudding; and succulent pastry logs made with pistachio and honey (each at Trl100,000, £1.30).
This is not an innovative style of cooking. Good Turkish cooks do not create new sauces or yoke together ingredients usually considered ill-matched. Californian eclecticism has not come to Istanbul. The Turkish chef - here the talented but self-effacing Tayfun Silindir - concentrates on traditional recipes, extracting the maximum of flavour from the freshest of ingredients.
It is not a bad formula for good healthy balanced eating either.
The wine list concentrates on Turkish bottles, which are rarely inspiring but sensibly priced at £5-£10; costlier European bottles from the Swissotel cellars are also available.
