Bayramoğlu

Bayramoğlu proves what superb quality fast food can be. This place dishes out thousands of portions of döner everyday, non-stop. Despite being outside of the beaten path of Istanbul’s more touristic destinations (I personally don’t know the public transport routes that would take me here as a born and raised Istanbul local), a good portion of their customers are tourists. That’s how good it is.

What to order: A portion of döner. The döner is cooked on vertical rotisseries and hand-cut by expert döner masters. What makes Bayramoğlu special is that instead of using modern electrical grills, it sticks to the traditional charcoal grill. The charcoals are placed in the vertical grill in small shelves to evenly distribute the heat.
If you look closely you can see how high the heat is from the flames reaching beyond the top of the vertical rotisserie meat. There are two of these huge cylinders turning non-stop. The sheer quantity of output makes the döner even better, with the outside layer crisped and cooked while the other side remains juicy.
Get a portion (or a one and a half portion) of döner which comes with sides of salads, pickles and a palte of subpar potato fries. But the lavaş bread is the special accompanier. It’s made freshly in the fiery oven pits. The oven master cooks them by sticking the dough to the walls of pit for less than a minute and then freshly spreading the lavaş to be the bed and blanket of the hot döner cuts.

What to know: The döner in Turkey is not like its European cousins. It comes in thin lavaş bread, in large hand-cut slices without any sauce or salad on top. It’s a quick service meal but the focus is on the taste of the meat rather than the gluttony of drunk ravers. At Bayramoğlu the meat is 85% veal and 15% lamb.

Fun fact: After Mikla’s chef Mehmet Gürs and Vogue Tukrey’s food editor Cemre Torun took him here, Momofuku’s David Chang has been raving about Bayramoğlu on his socials.