Istanbul (3) - Kanaat

Kanaat, located on the Asian side of Istanbul, is a renowned restaurant for home style Turkish cooking. The Boyfriend face glowed as he stared at the menu-and his eyes grew wide – the way mine do at the sight of a Net a Porter sale - pointing out the things that he hadn't been able to eat outside of his parents home. Obviously, this meant that every dish was compared to The Parent's version - and whilst all fell short, it was only by a little - extraordinarily high praise. (Please note - The Turks are a bit like the Italians in the sense that no food is as good as Mama's, whereas most people in the UK go out to eat better food than they can find at home, most Turkish people seem to feel that anything found in a restaurant is never as good as home leading one to wonder why they even have restaurants in the first place? Anyway, any Turkish person you meet - if discussing some type of food you want to try, will normally invite you to their home or in the case of one of The Boyfriend's friend will offer to ship you their mother's version of the dish in question. So basically any Turkish restaurant is a really an imitation of the best Turkish food.

The restaurant is easily accessible from the more touristy areas, on the European side of the Bosphorus, or in our case the Kempinski, by way of a 10 minute boat ride, and a very nice one at that -  with views of the First Bridge, Sultanahmet and glimpses of the Marmara Sea. The boat required goes from Besiktas to Uskudar, and from there it is about a 3 minute walk. By Istanbul standards, assuming Istanbul traffic, it is a very short journey - and totally worth it. The neighbourhood is also a much more traditional than the areas The Boyfriend and I had been hanging out, a warning I wish I had received before getting dressed that morning – my shorts looked more than a little out of place.

The restaurant, and the area come to think of it, is not a fancy place, it is fairly bland to look at it and a little cool. There is no outside seating and most notably after a ten days in Italy no alcohol – a testiment to the clients they are catering for and the traditional nature of the venue. On every table sat a large pile of bread.

The system of a semi-buffet is odd. You are given a menu, but you can also pick what you want from the massive trays of food in the corner of the restaurant but it still delivered by the waiter. Given this system the food obviously arrives quickly. And let’s be honest, you would expect it to be poor quality canteen style dining something akin to school dinner,  but on the contrary, it was the best meal we had in Turkey.

Of course we ordered too much, (wouldn’t you in the face of that?)  and yet the food was so good we made a an impressive attempt to finish all seven or so of our dishes.

Pilaf Rice with Liver and Raisins -Icli Pilav

This was possibly the best rice dish I've ever eaten. It was oily, (health freaks look away now) as were most of the dishes we tried - this seems to be a theme in Turkish cooking. I was glorious though; it was rather sweet in a sense thanks to the tiny little “raisinettes”, filled with pine nuts and well seasoned, it slided down the throat lubricated by the mountains of oil and butter than I am sure were present.  It also included chunks of liver; the meat component - if a small one – that meant it is a rather traditional Turkish main dish, rather than an accompaniment. This was the dish that came closest to beating The Parent's version.

Lamb and Potato – Orman Kebabi

The Boyfriend’s description: “literally means the kebab of the forest". The lamb melted in your mouth although the texture was well-done cubes of meat, a more than impressive feat. It was juicy dish with possibly beef stock and almost clear soup looking. All ingredients benefited from the well balanced meat stock and had absorbed this, which meant if you drop something back on your plate with the excitement, not only did you have an empty fork end up in your mouth, but also spilled the juices on your shirt with the splash of the piece of potato on the plate. The potatoes were like boiled but had absorbed the broth. Little pieces of tomatoes resembled taste of a rehydrated sun-dried tomato.

Patlicanli Kofte

Meatballs in Istanbul really changed my thoughts about food, the way I had so hoped that pasta would do in Italy. The meatball - the mighty, mighty meatball. On the flight home all I could think is  - Why are meatballs so rare? Why do we consider them to be Italian? Why do we consider them to be a rather lowly form of beef? Why do we not place them akin to steak or a good stew or a great hamburger?  Why are meatballs not considered the height of culinary refinement? Steaks are hardly challenging by way of technical achievement, success requires only high quality meat and a timer and yet they are given such a respected place in  culinary achievement. On the other hand, a meatball requires a delicate balance of seasoning and texture, so much harder to achieve. Why, unlike Istanbul, does London lack any meatball restaurants (and no, Da Polpo doesn’t count)? I am going through what one could call a meatball epiphany in which I think that meatballs are the ultimate way to serve meat. With a meatball you’ve got options -  thick? Chunky? Textured? Smooth? heavily seasoned? mixed with other meats? or plain? rare inside? cooked inside,? char outside? covered in bulgar wheat?. Sure! Whatever you want, your options with a meatball are endless. Can you do that with a steak? No. Can you do that with a stew or a meat pie? Not really.  Meatballs are they way forward.

Despite being another technically “Turkish meatball”, this was very different from the ones we had encountered at Sultanahmet Koftecisi. The texture was closer to the ones I had at Da Polpo but  Da Polpo should definitely check these out. It was thick and granular, with lumps of seasoning and meat. It was perfect. The chunky texture enveloped my tongue whilst the flavour of the meat sung songs of food joy.  It was incredible. The meatballs were wrapped in rather thin pieces of aubergine, which I assume helped keep the meatballs soft and liquid. The dish also included roasted tomatoes like the ones you would get at breakfast, a piece of fresh green pepper – for those who like to spice up things a bit, and most importantly, mashed potatoes. I love potatoes, but the mash was different. It was absolutely delicious and satisfying, and included at least a stick of butter. They had managed to turn mash potatoes into such a thin component that it ended up being almost a light potato soup. What made the whole dish exceptional was how well each component was made, without being scared of butter or seasoning, as well as the oily tomato sauce the whole dish sat on.

Stuffed Pepper

This was the only dish I could have forgone - mainly because I disliked the two main attributes - pepper and cold rice. This was one of the olive oil marinated dishes that are served cold. Turks also make stuffed pepper with mince meat served warm. The pepper had a strong and almost dominating taste, which had to be balanced by stuffing a lot of rice in one’s mouth at the same time. Perhaps it is a less aggressive tasting dish if you only eat the rice inside. The Boyfriend says, that is what little kids do in any case in Turkey.

Baked Macaroni

Apparently this is actually a Turkish dish, not actually a rip off of the American Mac and Cheese.The macaroni itself was incredibly soft and light, white looking almost, giving one the feeling that they may have not used any eggs while making it. The dish is baked in a pastry light as it includes random pieces of Turkish white cheese and dill. In many respects it was as unlike a macaroni and cheese and you could get. Soft pasta ripping apart at the slightest touch, a lack of thick cheese sauce replaced by the ever so random bits of cheese, and the light and crunchy pastry topping as opposed to your typical burnt cheese crust.


Cacik
A yogurt based dished combined with cucumber, dill and olive oil. It was on the runny side, and in the summer it is treated as a Gazpacho-like dish a refresher to break up the rather heavy and oily dishes we had been eating.

Dessert was equally satisfying. 

A die- hard rice pudding fan, I expected my rice pudding  to confirm my love for Kanaat, but surprisingly it was the other dessert the Ekmek Kadayifi, that put Kanaat firmly into the "Best Restaurant in Istanbul" box. It is not that the rice pudding was bad, it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination. Rather it was the Ekmek Kadayifi, which was so outstandingly good, the rice pudding which tasted like a traditional rice pudding wasn’t really a competitor.

The Ekmek Kadayifi involved, bread according to the boyfriend soaked in a heavy syrupy sauce, it was much like the dessert that had almost reduced me to tears in Dinner, several months earlier just better. It was saccharine sweet, but tempered by the incredible cream so thick it required a knife to be cut, piled high on top. Full marks.

Our totally bill, lunch for effectively four, which really limited outfit choices for the next week or so, came to 80 Turkish liras, or around 16 pounds a head. Plus the 5 lira cab ride from the Kempinski and the 3.50 lira return trip on the boat it’s the most incredible bargain ever - confirming my thoughts that if you want to eat well in Istanbul go local.