Boğaziçi Lokantası

Boğaziçi Lokantası has stood on Denizciler Caddesi in Ulus, the old centre of Ankara, since 1956. Its founder, Mehmet Recai Boyacıoğlu, arrived from Istanbul, where he had been a head chef, and named the place after the Bosphorus — partly out of homesickness, partly because his street, Denizciler, means the Mariners' Road. When he died in 1991 his son Halil İbrahim Boyacıoğlu took over, and the family has run it since.

What the kitchen does is increasingly rare in Turkey. This is a sulu yemek house: slow-cooked stews and vegetable dishes held in trays, ladled to order, changed daily — the everyday cooking of home kitchens and old tradesmen's eateries, as distinct from the grill houses. Sixty to sixty-five dishes go out each day, the list is rewritten at half past eleven each morning, and the house keeps an archive of close to two thousand recipes.

A single day's board gives the range: lentil soup, chicken broth with vermicelli, calf's head and tripe soups; Ankara tava, braised lamb, islim kebab wrapped in aubergine, oven-baked shank and çoban kavurma; peas, stuffed vine leaves, mixed vegetables, spinach, white beans and aubergine moussaka; bulgur and rice pilafs; then şekerpare, aşure, baked rice pudding, tel kadayıf and ekmek kadayıfı under clotted cream for dessert.

The house claims to have been the first in Ankara to put its kitchen behind glass, so diners choose by looking into the pots. Doors open at seven and close at nine at night, weekdays and weekends alike.