(Editor’s Note: This guest post comes courtesy of Salih Seckin Sevinc, author of the great Turkish-language food blog

Although this review is of Sirkeci’s Kral Kokoreç, it is first and foremost a tribute to Vahap Usta, Turkey’s original king of kokoreç.

The second half of the 1980’s: I remember me and my mom heading to the street of the “Big Post Office” in Sirkeci during her lunch break. In my mind, the street of the Buyuk Postane is the best place to reflect on the spirit and history of the Sirkeci neighborhood. On this street, I would always see a big crowd standing in front of a small shop on a corner opposite the Ziraat Bank (which still exists in the same place). I can remember that inside that shop there was a guy suited up and wearing a bow-tie working in front of a giant kokoreç cart, passing one half sandwich of kokoreç (grilled lamb intestines) after another to the people waiting in line.

This guy was the legendary Vahap Usta, who singlehandedly made kokoreç famous in Turkey. He was a weird man, though.  By adding his remarkable sense of style to kokoreç’s taste, he developed a new way to market the stuff and very quickly became a culinary legend (and a rich one, at that, at one point driving a Mercedes to get to his cart). But in due course he disappeared, along with his legend and story, never to regain his fame. Over the years, I saw him hawking kokoreç in varied places – respectively in Maltepe on the Asian side, the Çiçek Pasajı and Buyukparmakkapi street in Beyoglu and back on the Asian side in the Kiziltoprak area. For some reason, he would close all these new initiatives after only a few months and move on to the next one.

Today, while Vahap Usta is still around, he is no longer standing by his cart and grilling the kokoreç. Rather, in a desperate move to regain his fame, he is selling to others the right to use his name. I am so sorry for Vahap Usta. I would really like to learn and write his true story and find out what lies beneath his tales.

For now, what remains of Vahap’s original kokoreç vision is Kral Kokoreç (“Kral” means king in Turkish), which is run by Hasan Usta, who hails from the eastern Turkish city of Ardahan, and has been operating since 1992 in Vahap Usta’s old place on the street of the Buyuk Postane.

While my subconscious always compares anyone else’s kokoreç-making skills with Vahap Usta’s, I see Hasan Usta in the same league as the king. After dozens of trips to this place, I can say that Hasan Usta’s kokoreç is excellent. They are not simply buying the lamb intestines used in their kokoreç, but are actually raising the lambs, too, which gives them full control over the whole process. Hasan Usta has been involved in kokoreç business since the 1980’s, first starting with a small kokoreç cart in Şişli. Today he is helped out by his two veteran assistants, Burhan and Adnan, who have also been in this business for many years and, like Hasan Usta, have clearly fallen in love with kokoreç.

During our talk, Hasan mentioned that a lot of things have changed from those early days, but he became serious when the subject turned to Vahap Usta. “Kill the hero but pay him his due,” he said, using a Turkish idiom. “He was the one who introduced kokoreç to Turkey and made this dish loved by the people. Unfortunately things didn’t go as planned for him and after that he could never rise again.”

Hasan Usta showed us the real ritual of eating kokoreç. He advised us to stay away from tomato and green pepper, which are often served alongside kokoreç, and eat it unadorned (except for a sprinkling of oregano and red pepper flakes). “You should eat good kokoreç as it is in order to understand its taste better,” he said. We listened him and ordered a full portion of ungarnished sliced kokoreç. Of course you can also eat it served inside a fresh pita or a crusty hunk of bread.

Judging by the large amount of tourists around, I can say that there are a lot of world citizens that tried kokoreç at Hasan Usta’s for the first time and liked it very much. Over the years, I have heard many discussions about the hygiene of this dish and the possibility that European Union rules could lead to its eventual prohibition. But folks, during my last visit to Florence, Italy, I saw another culture that ate intestines and tripe by the cart load, so I am closing my ears to these nonsensical discussions.

Making a long story short, long live kokoreç!

Address: Büyük Postane cd. No: 54, Sirkeci
Telephone: 212-513-6493

(photo by Salih Seckin Sevinc)

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 Sirkeci neighborhood’s shoe-box sized Meşhur Filibe Köftecisi for the last 30 years. The dough-faced Ziver, 53, 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.

“Just like a shop goes from father to son, the grill goes from one master to another,” Ziver, dressed in a white apron and a small peaked cap that looks like it actually might have been salvaged from the kitchen of a 1950’s American drive-in burger stand, says proudly. Does he get bored doing the same thing six days a week? Ziver seems surprised to hear the question. “Never,” he says. “I do it with love. I like serving folks.”

Indeed, we definitely felt the love in Filibe’s outstanding köfte, juicy little buttons of meat that come off Ziver’s coal-fired grill with just the right amout of char. (Actually, although the name Filibe refers to the Balkan town where the restaurant’s owners hail from, the cook told us it really means “juicy.”) The piyaz (white bean salad, served with shredded lettuce and carrot) that came on the side was impeccably fresh and, as always, provided just the right counterpoint to the little meatballs. The restaurant’s central location — not far from the Sirkeci train station and the bustling open-air “food court” on Hocapasa Sokak — further adds to its appeal.

The century-old, two-item menu here is augmented by the presence of revani, an extremely homey dessert made out of a dense white cake that’s been soaked in a sugary syrup. “It’s good for your sex drive,” waiter Mehmet promised us with a sly nod, Ziver chuckling appreciatively, as if it was the first time he heard that joke in the 30 years that they have been working together.

Great köfte, time-proven service and bawdy humor – who can get bored with that?

Address: Ankara Cad. No: 112, Sirkeci
Telephone: 212-519-3976

(photo by Yigal Schleifer)

Istanbul has plenty of kebab joints, but places serving cağ are sadly hard to find. Originating in the eastern Anatolian province of Erzurum, the kebab looks like a horizontal döner, but tastes otherworldly. If South American cowboys somehow found themselves in Erzurum’s grassy Turkish steppe, they would surely be struck down with déjà vu at the sight of this carnivores’ fantasy, turning slowly over a hardwood fire. The way we see it, cağ is the Turkish equivalent of Argentina’s asado or the Brazilian churrasco, a kebab for serious meat lovers.

Fortunately, we’ve found an excellent place to keep getting our cağ fix, Şehzade Erzurum Cağ Kebabi, not far from the Sirkeci train station and the Sultanahmet area. The restaurant’s location, on the pedestrian-only Hocapasa Sokak, is a winner. Lined with restaurant after restaurant serving superb traditional Turkish food (and home to Kasap Osman, an Istanbul Eats favorite), we like to think of Hacapasa Sokak as a foodies’ fantasy food court. One could easily spend a half day there, working their way through the street’s restaurants.

Şehzade Erzerum Cağ Kebabcisi, at the entrance to Hocapask street, has only a handful of tables, all within whiffing distance of the spit, where cuts of lamb expertly marinated slowly cook over a wood fire.  As the horizontal spit slowly turns, the meat continuously bastes itself, occasionally flaring up with a sizzle and a pop that chars an outlying corner of meat. Unlike döner, where the dönerci saws and hacks from his vertical spit, leaving the meat he has cut off lying in a puddle of grease, the cağ man carefully selects each morsel of meat from the spit with a sharp knife and a small, thin skewer. A dönerci’s work has more in common with that of a lumberjack, but doing cağ right requires the patient and steady hands of a skilled surgeon (or, come to think of it, a good electrician). When he’s done he’ll present you the skewer, threaded with a precious collection of tender yet crispy bites, served on top of a toasty warm piece of lavash.

Compared to the now defunct spot in Karakoy, which served up cağ and nothing but, Şehzade has a slightly more expansive menu. Along with our kebab, we had a hearty red lentil soup to start our meal and a small plate of piquant ezme (a salad of finely chopped tomatoes, onions and parsley) to go along with the meat. The restaurant even serves a very tasty dessert – the state-fair-worthy kadayif dolma, a fat torpedo made out of shredded wheat wrapped around a core of chopped nuts and then deep-fried and doused with a sticky sweet syrup.

With its prime location and steady clientele, it would appear that this cağ kebab place is not in danger of closing down any time soon. Just to make sure, though, before leaving we asked the spit master if he had previously worked as an electrician. His answer, an emphatic “no,” left us feeling at ease.

Address: Hocapasa Sok. 3/A, Sirkeci
Telephone: 212-520-3361

(photo by Yigal Schleifer)

Though Iskender kebab is a registered trademark of the famous Kebapci Iskender restaurant in Bursa, imitations are ubiquitous. In Istanbul, Iskender kebab – a dish based on döner, strips of roasted lamb shaved off from a vertical spit – is almost as common as designer knock-offs in the Grand Bazaar. But unlike a $20 Dolce & Gabbana track suit with dubious stitchwork, the “pirated” Iskender kebab over at Kasap Osman’s in the Sirkeci neighborhood is most certainly the real thing, if not better.

The restaurant is located around the corner from the Sirkeci train station, on a side street that’s best described as an open-air food court for serious eaters. Restaurants offering Kurufasuliye (Turkish style baked beans), pide (or Turkish pizza) and other local specialties stand cheek by jowl on this crowded little street filled with outdoor tables. But something extra special radiates from Kasap Osman (“Osman the Butcher” in Turkish), where, turning slowly on an upright spit, stands a blue ribbon döner carefully watched by the usta.

Döner, slices of lamb stacked like pancakes on a tall skewer and slowly turned before a vertical grill, is the most important factor in any Iskender kebab. Though gas and electric grills are more common these days, we far prefer the smoky flavor imparted by the traditional cooking method employed by Kasap Osman, where charcoal is used to roast the döner. Naturally the quality of the meat plays an important role as well, and who better to trust at the spit than Osman, who actually is a former butcher. Osman and his team also have experience working in their favor, having turned döner spit for a loyal, hungry audience of local shopkeepers and office workers everyday for the last 25 years from the same corner on Hocapasa.

Timed to coincide with the lunch hour rush, at around noon the usta starts shaving off the first long ribbons of succulent döner and collecting them in the pan in his other hand. The döner is then sent to the kitchen where it becomes Iskender kebab and other döner-based dishes. For Iskender, our favorite, the cooked meat is laid over a bed of chopped flatbread in a clay dish and garnished with peppers and tomatoes and dressed with a thin tomato sauce. The dish is then quickly fired in the oven crisping the saucy bread on the bottom and softening the garnish. Finally the whole dish is doused with butter browned in a skillet and a quick dollop of thick yogurt is added to one side. We can often hear our Iskender sizzling on its way to the table.

So noble a kebab, it’s quite logical that someone trademarked it and no surprise at all that the trademark is infringed upon everyday from Melbourne to Miami. But if you don’t have time for the official Iskender kebab pilgrimage to Bursa, head over to Kasap Osman for the best genuine fake Iskender in the city.

Address: Hocapasa Sokak 22, Sirkeci
Telephone: 212-519-3216

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