Monday

Meşhur Filibe Köftecisi: Keeping Their Eye on the Meatball

Where we come from, flipping burgers is a time-honored tradition among pimply teenagers looking for a summer job and troubled short-order cooks looking for a place to land in between firings. It’s work that promises mobility, not stability.

But don’t tell that to Ziver Usta, who’s been turning the köfte – something like Turkey’s equivalent of the hamburger – at the grill of the shoe-box-sized Meşhur Filibe Köftecisi in Sirkeci for the last 30 years. The dough-faced Ziver, in his early fifties, is actually the restaurant’s junior employee – “head waiter” Mehmet has been there for 40 years – but his long tenure means he’s only one of a select handful of grill masters who have worked at Filibe over the course of its 100-year history.

The rest of this previously featured review can be found on CulinaryBackstreets.com, here.

In case you didn’t know, Istanbul Eats now lives over at Culinary Backstreets. Same great culinary walks, same great culinary writing. You’ll be redirected there in a few seconds!

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