Basta Street Food: A Path From Michelin Stars To A Dürüm Restaurant

It looks like the new chefs are getting bored of the starched table cloths and silver cutleries of the Michelin star restaurants, which is the result of the fine-dining concept, such that they’ve recently started to trespass these rules and taken a step towards the concept of “bistronomy” which I think will be the future of gastronomy and “food truck” which is a sort of travelling restaurant.

We have witnessed that the molecular cuisine has been overtaken by the naturalist culinary movement and then this was followed by an emphasis on the authentic cultures. Hence in recent years, with the global trend of localized kitchen, the menus have been shaped in accordance with the ingredients and culinary culture from the same vicinity. Thanks to the encouraging developments, street food too was eventually taken up by the trained chefs.

One of the limited number of Turkish restaurants which are close to Michelin star standards, Nicole Restaurant’s talented chef Kaan Sakarya and his close friend Derin Arıbaş partnered up and opened a new eatery in Istanbul, which is coming up big on the street food scene: Basta Street Food.

So as to understand that Basta is not just a usual dürüm (sort of wrap) döner kebab restaurant, one just needs look at the duo’s training background which include Alain Passard and Paul Bocuse and the star-awarded restaurants they had worked for in France and Belgium. The restaurant is quite small yet cozy and has a seating capacity of only 12-13 people. Out of its small kitchen, big tastes emerge just as it is expected from such a culinary experience.

The most popular dürüm of Basta is lamb ribs dürüm. While Nicole Restaurant pleases the eyes with its lamb meat dish, dear Kaan and Derin puts it into tandoori-baked thin lavash. For the dish, lamb ribs are sourced from Balıkesir and get marinated with various spices and slowly cooked for 8 hours straight. It is then accompanied by some yoghurt with roasted onion, pepper and paprika, plus a sort of sauce called harissa which is made with Tunisian hot peppers. While the ingredients are balanced very well, I think the only problem with the dürüm is that lamb meat is a bit fatty. As far as we learned from Chef Kaan, the fat ratio is 40%, however it needs to a bit lower than that.

Chorizo sujuk dürüm again with its harissa sauce and lamb meat is another taste we know from Nicole Restaurant.

For smoked beef dürüm (füme dana dürüm), meat is slowly cooked at 80 degrees for 2.5 hours. Other ingredients are honey mustards, mayonnaise, red cabbage and iceberg lettuce. This time, the meat has lower fat ratio with 25%.

For chicken which everyone has recently started to hesitate to have in their kitchens, Basta uses only free-range chickens. After getting smoked and cooked as a whole in 1.5 hours, chickens are slightly fried before they get wrapped in dürüm. The chicken dürüm has strained yoghurt, mint, coriander and cucumber as well as some special Bozkır tahini which is sourced from Konya.

The vegetarian dürüm is the last dürüm on the menu. It is made with seasonal flavors, and hence Basta nowadays goes with fresh asparagus for the vegetarian selection.

Humus is an appetizer you should go for at Basta since it is made according to the instructions Chef Derin learned from the Syrian chefs during his over 2 years of work experience at Dubai Le Meridien. The local sesames are baked in wood-fired oven longer than it would be for the chicken dürüm, which ends up with a slightly bitter hints.

The salad of the day is made with surprise ingredients since they change every day. Sometimes it comes with mulberry and peas, other days with artichoke, home-made “lor” cheese (a softer version of curd cheese) and purslane. While the salads feature a rich variety of greens such as common nettle, dill and fresh mint, you’ll be surprised by how fresh they are! They’re almost fresh as if they are collected from the back garden.

While the menu is strictly seasonal, you will also find different tastes from time to time. For example, nowadays, the menu features kid meat over pilaf and village bread with eggs and chanterelle mushroom.

As a proof that the two chefs had their training in France, the first dessert is Paris-Brest also known as the wheel-shaped éclair. The story behind the dessert is that it came to life when a bakery wanted to attract attention during one of those popular bicycle races between Paris and Brest cities in France and produced this wheel-shaped pastry dessert with Pralin filling. Another dessert is sütlaç, which tastes fine and rather resembles “rice pudding” since it is made with eggs, vanilla and cream.

Besides taking simple Turkish flavors and interpreting them seriously to popularize them again, probably the best thing about Basta is that any of these things cost less than 20 liras.

Moved by the words “Basta! It’s people’s voice that matter! The chefs now explore the streets!” the duo took the plunge as we’ve been wanting to see and opened Basta in Istanbul. It is an interesting experience to eat dürüm made by the chefs who worked for Michelin star restaurants. With that, it’s even more interesting to see how creative a usual dürüm can be! You’re recommended to give it a try!

Bon appétit and enjoy the taste of life…