Gül Kebap: Kemeralti On A Copper Plate

While we’re running out of “historic” restaurants as time goes by, there’s another issue about how successful the surviving ones are at keeping their authenticity. Apparently, as the youth has now a wider variety of jobs to choose from thanks to the modern world, it has become even more difficult for some of these historic values to pass down to the new generations. This fact has been a major blow for those restaurants whose owners are bound to change over time.

Lucky for us, we still have those restaurants at Kemeraltı to be proud of, where mastership has been passed down from the old generations to the new ones successfully. Almost 70 years old, Gül Kebap is one of such restaurants, which has almost become the symbol of Şadırvanaltı.

The restaurant was opened by Hacı Mehmet Ali Gülgeze in 1949. A migrant from Crete, Mr. Mehmet had also taken an active part as a captain in the Battle of Gallipoli. His dexterity first found its way to his sons Mustafa and Muhsin and passed down to Hüsnü (the son of Mr. Muhsin) and then to Burak, the grandchild of Mr. Muhsin, hence has been sustained for 4 generations.

The restaurant has a seating capacity for 40 people, however the ground floor of the restaurant is not as spacious as the upper floor. While the soup service starts at 07:00 every morning, when the clock hits 11:00, döner service is launched. However, you have to be quick, since Kemeraltı tourists will have finished the whole döner by 15:00. That means, döner is ultimately fresh, unlike the ones at those restaurants where the stack of meat is kept against the fire the whole day until it turns into a piece of charcoal.

Besides its döner, which is prepared from lamb meat and veal by the way, fry-pan meatballs (tr. tava köfte) is another popular dish of Gül Kebap. For the meatballs, leg, fore shank and neck veal cuts are kneaded with bread crumbles and some salt. The mixture is sort of lightly pre-cooked in some oil and then if someone orders the dish, it is deep-fried.

The bottom layer of the dish consists of pieces of pide which is made from a special sort of flour called “kepekaltı.” The pide layer is moistened with some bone broth and further flavored with some sweet-sour tomato sauce which is prepared from real tomatoes hence bearing a sweet-sour taste. Following the fry-pan meatballs and döner layers, yoghurt covers the whole treasure which is topped by fried dry red pepper. This dreamy combination of flavors comes in a shallow hand-made copper plate.

And of course, it is a must to crown such a feast with some Kemal Pasha dessert flavored with mastic and tahini, which is supposed to be a nod to the hometown of Mr. Mehmet’s family. As Gül Kebap is lately featured by Izmir Gourmet Guide, it is unto the Izmirians to protect such a valuable culinary asset…

Bon appétit and enjoy the taste of life!..