Tuesday

Vahap Usta: The Man Who Would Be (Kokoreç) King, Pt. I

Vahap Usta pulled a pair of reading glasses from the inside pocket of a snug dinner jacket and sifted through a stack of newspaper clippings. Here was a full spread from a major daily paper proclaiming him the “King of Kokoreç” and another with him in his signature tuxedo and bowtie in front of his stand in the central Sirkeci district. The horizontal rack of javelin-length skewers loaded with tightly wound lamb intestines sagged in the middle from the weight. His stand, a hulking stainless steel cart, was so gleaming it resembled a Streamline trailer. Another article reported on his protest of Turkey’s EU accession bid because of a clause that would forbid kokoreç for sanitary reasons. The “bow-tied businessman of Sirkeci”, as he was called in yet another article, was more than a great photo opportunity; he was a prosperous businessman and a true Istanbul character whose trajectory reflected the hopes of many who still come to make it in this city.

A migrant from Malatya in Eastern Turkey who hustled tea near the Egyptian Bazaar as a boy, by the mid 1990’s he lorded over an empire of kokoreç stands – 33 at its peak – walked his own production floor, drove a white Mercedes (“when that model was in style,” Vahap Usta pointed out) and counted more than 50 tuxedos in his closet. Continue…