Alaf Kuruçeşme
Istanbul
W skrócie
Recenzje
We live in San Francisco and frequent NYC foodie havens. This restaurant legitimately gets its Michelin Star. Our server Ozgur was top notch. We highly recommend this place.
We have an amazing meal at Alaf to celebrate our 9 year anniversary! The staff added in some extra treats to help us celebrate too! Food and vibes were exceptional. Tasting menu was perfect, some really interesting flavours - all executed fantastically. If someone told me I'd have a pepper for dessert and LOVE it I would have been sceptical! But it was one if the standout dishes for me. Cocktails also great, service very high end yet charming and cheeky. Will return.
The overall experience was really positive. The service good and attentive. The food flavour combinations - pleasantly new and surprising. The highlights of the meal were the lamb ribs and the pepper dessert! The beef main seemed to be missing something after the exciting starters.
Ozgür is a legend. He took great care of us. This is my second time visiting Alaf. First time was 2 years ago. Different menu, still the same great taste. So happy I was able to come back and experience this amazing tasting menu. Definitely recommend
I visited this restaurant in Istanbul recently, having heard many strong recommendations and knowing it holds a Michelin star, so my expectations were high. We opted for the tasting menu. The ambiance was lovely, the restaurant is beautiful inside, with a warm, refined atmosphere. The staff were genuinely kind, attentive, and professional throughout the evening, which made the experience feel welcoming rather than formal or stiff. We began with cocktails, which were excellent, followed by wine that was also very well chosen and enjoyable. The tasting menu itself was interesting and clearly playful in concept. I could understand what the kitchen was aiming for, and I appreciate creativity, especially in a tasting format. However, I’m not sure the menu fully came together. I usually love tasting menus and the variety they offer, but in this case, the combinations didn’t particularly excite me, and some courses felt a little disjointed. A recurring issue throughout the evening was temperature. Several dishes arrived cold when they would have benefitted greatly from being warm. The Turkish dumplings (dolma) were served cold, as were some of the meat dishes. While the flavours were good, the experience would have been far stronger had the food been served at the right temperature. There were also a few conceptual choices that didn’t quite land for me. The palate cleanser — a vine leaf ice cream served on top of an ice cube — was certainly inventive, but it didn’t feel cohesive with the rest of the menu or the overall vibe of the meal. That said, dessert was outstanding and easily the highlight of the evening. The pepper chocolate ganache was fabulous, and I was genuinely impressed. The menu was also very filling, we couldn’t even finish the dessert. It was a nice touch that the chef sent out a small mushroom pizza as an apology for the cold dishes, which was delicious and appreciated. In the end, the meal was quite expensive, especially by Istanbul standards. I don’t mind paying for exceptional food and experiences, but I didn’t feel the price was fully justified based on this visit. Given how highly recommended the restaurant is, I’m not sure whether this was simply an off night or a seasonal issue with the menu, but overall, the experience didn’t quite live up to expectations.
