Batur Durmay happily admits that his restaurant, Asitane, is an indulgence. ‘We didn’t open this place to make a lot of money’, he says. ‘I just have to be sure I get it right.’ Getting it right means ensuring the dishes on his menu are what you could have eaten had you been invited to a banquet with the sultan at the Topkapı Palace around 1700.
Asitane was set up by Batur’s family in 1991 so they’d have an interesting place to take clients in their primary business, which was making steel moulds for heavy industry. Batur, the most obsessive foodie in a family of gourmets, was tasked with unearthing recipes that displayed the opulence and diversity of one of the greatest empires in history.
