BITCHLOVE

The Kitchen

Bar food

Everything here is a real recipe with real temperatures. Nothing needs a restaurant kitchen — a pan, an oven, and something to drink while you wait.

2 showing · 444 plates · 15 drinks

vegan 73 vegetarian 36
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Istanbul, Turkey — they call it meze

Meyhane, not bar. You sit, a tray of cold meze comes to the table, you point at what you want. Cold plates first — cured fish, beans, yogurt, olive-oil vegetables — then ara sıcak, the hot round, then grilled fish if anyone is still upright. Raki gets its own tall glass with a water glass beside it, and nobody drinks it without food. Bread and white cheese arrive unasked. Four hours, minimum.

everything dips 63 fried 120 loaded 164 skewers 43 sliders 32 wings 14 sweet 8
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Grilled Mackerel in Bread

Balık Ekmek · Istanbul

Mackerel fillets off a charcoal grate, into half a loaf with raw onion, sumac and lettuce, eaten leaning on a railing. The whole thing costs nothing and fixes most problems.

30 min 2 sandwiches easy
Make it

You need

  • 2 whole mackerel, filleted, skin on
  • 2 half loaves of crusty white bread
  • 1 white onion, sliced paper-thin
  • 1 tbsp sumac
  • Handful of lettuce, shredded
  • Olive oil
  • Salt and coarse black pepper
  • 2 lemons

Method

  1. Pat the fillets very dry and rub with a little oil. Oil the grate too, hard, or the skin stays behind.
  2. Build a medium-high charcoal fire. You should be able to hold a hand five inches over the coals for about three seconds.
  3. Salt the fish as it hits the grill, not before. Cook skin side down 3 to 4 minutes without moving it, then flesh side 1 to 2 minutes, to 145F/63C and just flaking.
  4. Split the loaves and toast the cut sides on the grate for 30 seconds.
  5. Toss the onion with sumac and a pinch of salt. Load lettuce, then onion, then the hot fillets. Lemon over the top, plenty of black pepper.
  6. Eat within a minute, standing. Wrap the bottom in paper so it holds together.

Where you'd actually eat it: Eminönü, under the Galata bridge, boats rocking against the quay. Less a bar snack than the thing you eat with a paper cup of şalgam, sour turnip juice, on the way in or out.

From behind the bar: Salt the fish only as it goes on the fire. Salt it early and it weeps, glues itself to the grate, and comes off in shreds.

🍔

Steamed Garlic-Tomato Burger

Islak Hamburger · Istanbul

Thin beef patty, soft bun, a garlic and tomato sauce, then the whole thing held in a steam case until it collapses. Nobody claims it is good. Everybody has eaten two of them at 3am.

60 min 6 burgers ▲ easy
Make it

You need

  • 1 lb ground beef, 80/20
  • 1 onion, grated and squeezed dry
  • 3 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp black pepper
  • Salt
  • 6 soft white burger buns, the cheaper the better
  • 3 tbsp tomato paste
  • 6 cloves garlic, crushed, for the sauce
  • 2 tbsp butter or olive oil
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 1 tbsp Maraş pepper flakes

Method

  1. Make the sauce. Cook the crushed garlic in the butter 1 minute, stir in the tomato paste, then the water, oregano, Maraş pepper and salt. Simmer 10 minutes. It should stay loose enough to soak into bread, not thick enough to sit on it.
  2. Knead the beef with the grated onion, garlic, cumin, pepper and salt for 3 minutes, until it turns sticky. Form six thin patties a little wider than the buns.
  3. Cook them in a dry hot skillet, 2 to 3 minutes a side, to 160F/71C. Ground beef gets no argument on this one.
  4. Split the buns. Do not toast anything. Crust is the enemy here.
  5. Brush sauce over both cut faces and over the top of each bun, set a patty in, and close them.
  6. Stack the burgers in a pot with a tight lid over 1 inch of barely simmering water, sitting on a rack or steamer basket so they never touch the water. Cover and steam 15 to 20 minutes.
  7. They are ready when the bun has gone translucent and soft enough to fall apart in your hand. Serve from the pot with extra sauce and eat over the paper.

Where you'd actually eat it: Kızılkayalar on Taksim square, burgers sweating in a glass case under strip lighting. The order you place at 3am on the way out of Nevizade, standing, saying nothing.

From behind the bar: Do not toast the bun and do not reduce the sauce. If the thing holds together neatly you have made an ordinary burger and missed the point.