Hunkar
Since 1950, Hunkar has been doing for Ottoman-Turkish home cooking what a great grandmother does for a family: preserving the recipes, maintaining the standards, and refusing to modernize when modernization means compromise. The Nisantasi flagship occupies a corner of Istanbul's most European-feeling neighborhood, and its clientele reflects the area — well-dressed, particular about food, and old enough to remember when every lokanta in the city cooked this way. The restaurant takes its name from its most famous dish, hunkar begendi — tender braised lamb served on a bed of smoked aubergine puree so silky it barely holds its shape. This single dish justifies the restaurant's seven decades of operation. But the rest of the menu delivers the same level of execution across the full range of classic Turkish lokanta cooking: slow-braised meats, fresh vegetable dishes cooked in olive oil, pilavs made with proper technique and proper butter. Nothing on the menu will surprise a Turkish diner. Everything on the menu will remind them why these dishes became classics in the first place.