All around Honolulu, restaurants sit dark or nearly empty, but at Istanbul, it looks as if the COVID-19 pandemic never happened. The restaurant has been operating at full capacity for dinner since it opened June 27, the result of curiosity and goodwill built up over four years of serving kebabs and pita wraps at farmers markets.
The Anaha condo tower location is a plus, directly across the street from Whole Foods Market. While grocery shopping during the stay-at-home period, I kept eyeing the Istanbul space, longing for a sign of life and the day we could eat out again.
It was a quantum leap from the makeshift nature of a farmers market to this luxury space — with a few growing pains on the restaurant side and sticker shock on the part of some farmers market clientele. With no preconceptions, newbies to this world of Turkish and what the owners call “Middle-terranean cuisine,” are able to judge the restaurant on its own merit.
The owners are Ahu Hettema and her parents, Aydin and Nilgun “Nili” Yildirim. A student of art and design, Hettema said that after finishing school, she wanted to consider other careers. Through her chef-mother, Nili, an avid cook, she found her way to food, enhancing her skills in chef Thomas Keller’s online MasterClass.
She put her art background to use in designing the restaurant’s beautiful open space, appointed with tables the family built and finished themselves, along with light fixtures and decor imported from Turkey. Much of their tableware is also from Turkey, creating the perfect backdrop for meze, falafels and meats.
The restaurant is open for dinner only through July 17, when lunch service starts. Hettema and her mom pride themselves on food from the heart, and through relationships built on the farmers market circuit, they are able to source local ingredients that they combine with spices imported from Turkey.
The menu opens with chilled and warm mezes (appetizers, $9 to $16). A shareable meze platter ($28) is a good place to start, currently featuring hummus, thicker than most because they don’t believe in over-processing; muhammara, a fire-roasted red pepper dip; falafel; and water borek, a savory boiled phyllo “bread” with a center of fresh feta cheese and MA‘O Organic Farms parsley. It’s all too easy to fill up on the accompanying pita bread, because you’ll want to soak up every bit of the muhammara, so simple but with so much depth of flavor in its combination of red peppers, walnuts, cumin, mint and cinnamon.
Between the pita, water borek and focaccia accompanying a dish of halloumi cheese, I really overdid it on the carbs on my first visit. The halloumi has a rubbery texture and you can feel its squeaky quality when you bite into it. It’s far more elegant when eaten in combination with accompanying Turkish dried apricots, Turkish pistachios and RareHawaiian Honey Co. honey.
If building your own meze platter from scratch, consider the baba ghanouj ($14), a puree of smoked Waimanalo eggplant, smoked garlic, tahini and extra virgin olive oil. Those uncomfortable sharing a dip could select the falafel, gold balls of organic chickpeas, MA‘O Farms herbs, tahini and Hettema’s grandmother’s signature blend of spices, called ras el hanout. Literally translated as “head of shop,” or “top shelf,” the term refers to a custom blend of a shop’s best spices. The blend adds up to one delicious, aromatic whole, almost like stepping into an incense shop. I also loved the crunchy nature of chickpeas that haven’t been over-processed.
One of the dishes winning over diners is the manti ($32), delicate grass-fed Kunoa Cattle Co. beef ravioli blanketed with a Greek yogurt sauce. Although billed as an entree “from the land,” there are so many of the smallish ravioli that it could be redundant eating so many. It’s best shared as an appetizer.
The ravioli are topped with burnt Maras pepper, my new love for its slow-building spicy, fruity character. This love intensified with a dish of fried chicken wings marinated with the peppers and fried in a tava, or shallow Turkish pan. It’s my favorite dish on the whole menu. I ate two orders in one sitting (everyone else was too full by the time it arrived), but it was missing from the menu on my second visit, potentially reserved solely for lunch. I hope it resurfaces at dinner, because it’s something every diner should try.
For the light eater, there is imam bayildi ($28), roasted Ho Farms eggplant topped with a tomato reduction and feta, served with tzatziki sauce and saffron rice dotted with black currants.
Lamb and beef doner ($27) was among the most popular items at the farmers market, and returns here in deconstructed style, the shaved meat piled over strips of pita with sides of saffron pilaf, tzatziki and tomato reduction.
Also on the menu are kebabs of chicken ($25) and aged Kunoa steak ($29), but these were not as interesting as other menu items.
For dessert, baklava ($9) comes in two types, one filled with walnuts, the other with Turkish pistachios. I prefer the latter. The baklava are finished with Rare Hawaiian Honey and served with creme fraiche ice cream.
Another must-have is the chocolate rose dondurma ($9), a thick Turkish ice cream incorporating Valrhona dark chocolate, rose petals and walnuts, served with rose- infused Turkish Delight on the side. Finish with Turkish tea or coffee.
Istanbul’s farmers market allure, beyond the food, drew from the warmth, connection and stories shared by the family. For now, you don’t get that at the restaurant because of the high volume of traffic. The owners are busy in the kitchen, leaving customer contact to servers who are not well versed in Turkish cuisine and unable to answer questions.
The food is labor-intensive, such that in Turkey, specialty shops focus on only one of these dishes and few places offer all that is served here. What this means is wait times can be long and some servers seem to have forgotten the standard meal progression. Ours thought it was OK to bring dessert out long before our entrees arrived. Oh well, if you can look past these growing pains, you will be rewarded.
Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.
