Friday
İsmail Kebapçısı: Lahmacun Tycoon
Editor’s note: In this ever-changing city, we like to rely on our usta at the oven or the grill to be there when we come in for a bite. But buildings are sold, opportunities arise across town, bankruptcy happens. One of our favorite cağ kebabı ustas even abandoned the spit for his previous calling as an electrician. We were sad to see İsmail’s spot at the oven down at Çıtır Lahmacun in Tophane filled by someone else and then pleasantly surprised to bump into İsmail on the street quite recently. He slipped us a fridge magnet with the telephone number and address of his new place in Taksim. We stopped in to see him and were happy to find him up to his old tricks. That is, making tasty lahmacun.
New address: Sıraselviler Caddesi, Hocazade Sokak 7, Beyoğlu (across from the entrance to the German Hospital)
Telephone: 212-252-3487
Where Beyoğlu slopes down towards the Bosphorus in Tophane, a rough-around-the-edges district named after a nearby Ottoman-era cannon factory, there’s not much in the way of swanky eating. Judging by the great piles of husks on the sidewalk, sunflower seeds are the dietary staple of the neighborhood. Well, that and a spicy flatbread called lahmacun (pronounced lah-ma-joon).
Over at İsmail Kebapçısı, owner İsmail smiles broadly from his post by a blackened stone oven. Continue…
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