Ahmet Ustam Ocakbaşı

In Etiler, on one of the back streets of Akatlar, there is an ocakbaşı: Ahmet Ustam.

Ahmet Karoğlu started out at nine or ten years old, beside a grill in Adıyaman. He came to Istanbul in 2003, worked in a few places and then opened his own. The original house is in Maslak, inside the car-repair district — that is the branch with a Bib Gourmand in the 2026 MICHELIN Guide Türkiye. This is the Etiler branch; there is also a summer place in Türkbükü and his Kebapçı Beko.

He picks the meat himself, going to the market and the abattoir at night. An ocakbaşı is built on exactly that: the fire in the open, the master in the open, nothing to hide behind.

The table opened with grilled peppers and tomatoes and with puffed bread under sesame and nigella. The lahmacun was thin and crisp. Off the grill came çöp şiş, sweetbreads, Adana kebabı, ribs and lamb chops; the menu also runs to yağlı kara and lamb şiş.

White cloths in the dining room, a candle on the table; sayings hang on the walls — "Karşıyım (Genel)" and "Derdimi seviyorum" are two of them. The meats and the mezes are good. As the evening wears on the music gets louder and the place turns from a restaurant into somewhere you go out. It is not cheap; expensive, even. But as a new-generation ocakbaşı, the quality has to be said to be there.