As Mission Local’s coverage around San Francisco grows, so does my dining reach; lucky me!
I ventured into the Inner Richmond to try Kitchen Istanbul, a longtime favorite of the neighborhood and, from what I gather, of neighborhood chefs on their nights off — always a good sign.
The space is spacious and airy, and boasts shelves of wine available for purchase; Kitchen Istanbul is a wine bar, after all, with quite an extensive list.
Owner Emrah Kilicoglu poured my selections — perhaps because I’d ordered the three-glass progression (a very welcome offering — I wish more restaurants would take this practice up), bringing a warm, familial vibe to the table.
I was a little surprised that there were no Turkish names on the wine list, but Kilocoglu explained it is difficult to get smaller, quality producers to export their wines here. The kind of wines he would like serve his customers would be too expensive to put on the menu, as most Turkish wines for U.S. imports are from big, corporate purveyors.
You can tell wine is very important to him — there are hundreds of selections from multiple regions and across many varietals — but the food here does not take second billing.
We started out with the pancar salad.
Red and beautiful Badger Flame beets share the plate with pickled onions, dill, pistachios, and a sprinkling of dukkah, all atop an amazingly distinctive and delicious pool of smoked labneh. The smokiness brought all the freshness together. First dish and I already had a favorite.
My three-glass progression wine flight, curated by Kitchen Istanbul’s sommelier Joseph DiGrigoli, started out with a half-pour of Avant Le Tempete, a French wine called Jacquère, known for its Alpine-fresh flavors.
Our next dish was a borek.
Most borek I’ve had have been savory affairs, filled with spiced ground beef or lamb, but Chef Busra Ayvaz’s version surprised me with its sweetness. The crispy and light phyllo dough delicately embraced two kinds of cheese, kasseri and goat, blended with sautéed leeks and laced with honey.
I’d have liked a little more of the leek flavor to permeate, as this felt more like a dessert to me, but it was a very good one.
My second half-pour in the progression was another French wine, Bourgogne Passetoutgrains, this one from Burgundy, a light and fruity red (blend of pinot noir and gamay) that went well with the next course.
In deciding between the charcoal grilled shrimp, the mussels, or the sea bream, we asked our server, herself from Turkey, which was her favorite and, without hesitation, she said the shrimp.
She was not wrong. The char flavoring on the perfectly snappy shrimp, swimming in prawn butter with little bits of briny olive crumble floating about, was quite heady. We asked for some pita to sop up the fragrant juices, and would not let them take the bowl away until we’d finished every last drop.
Next, of course, we had the manti.
Tender little satchels of ground beef and lamb came afloat a lake of spiced tomato sauce, the whole dish redolent of mint and what I believe was sumac, dotted with feta. (The pita came in handy to mop up this plate, too.) These meaty morsels are not to be missed.
With the manti came my final half-pour, a 2022 La Visciola Vignali Priore, made with the Cesanese grape from Lazio, Italy. Still on the light side, perfumey and delicate, but this stood up well to both lamb dishes. And was probably my favorite of the evening. Such a treat to try wines I had never heard of before.
We were seduced by the description of the Kedana kebaps…
Homemade lavash enveloped juicy, ground lamb belly and roasted eggplant, with little specks of Fresno chili to spice things up just a tad. A must-try.
Finally, dessert. The famous künefe:
How could we not? The sweet cheese pastry consists of a disk of crispy, shredded kadayif dough enveloping mild, unsalted cheese, the whole soaked in warmed sugar syrup and topped with pistachios. The delicate, buttery crunch giving way to melty, sweetened cheese is quite addictive.
There is much more I’d like to try on the menu: The tahini piyaz (a bean dish with a cured egg yolk), the saksuka (Turkish version of shakshuka), and girit ezme (a feta and pistachio dip that has me pre-swooning). (Especially loved the hummus descriptor — “You know what hummus is.”)
A playland of wines, flavors of Istanbul, friendly service, and not crazy expensive (ok, not cheap eats, but somewhere in the middle), and a handy-dandy wine club to join with options to fit your budget. It’s the whole package, and a rich reward for venturing out of our neighborhood.
Kitchen Istanbul
349 Clement St.
S.F.
I take it on good recommendation that warm künefe after a good meal warms the
heart. It looks delicious!
Ever since the Great Highway debacle, there’s been a huge land rush of local publications sending newly hired reporters out to the Sunset and Richmond to take advantage of all the new AI-friendly residents who have moved in. I hope that Mission Local will consider the editorial approach it’s taking as it expands coverage. Would this publication have printed a story that said the writer “ventured into the Mission” to try a new restaurant, as if it was a strange and faraway place from which they might not return?
I get it, reader complaints. But Kitchen Istanbul has been around for at least 10 years and was Troya for a long time before that. And the photo of two young white women holding mobile phones is a bit overly trendy, considering Clement has been known as San Francisco’s “second Chinatown” since the late 70s. (Kitchen Istanbul is surrounded on three sides by Chinese restaurants and Chinese grocery stores, which probably wouldn’t have looked as ‘curated’ and ‘luxe’.)
We don’t just need more ethnic representation in journalism, we need more depth in reporting. Case in point, SFGate sent a reporter out to Noriega Street in 2024 to review Taqueria Chapala. The headline was, “A new family-owned restaurant fills major void in SF neighborhood”. The story itself was filled with phrases like “taco deserts” and “bring the gift of tacos to the Sunset” to refer to one three-block stretch of Noriega Street. It also used one customer as the source for saying that Mexican options were few and far between.
A quick Yelp search for “Mexican restaurants near me” would have shown her at least El Burrito Express (EBX) and Gordo’s, each of which have been in the Sunset for 40-plus years, are family-owned to the point where I just saw EBX’s owner at the register last week, and are still going strong. A quick city data search would also have shown her that the Sunset’s Latin population is steadily growing, even if it isn’t visible on the surface. For all the emphasis she put on family and being Mexican American, it was pretty disrespectful to leave those two restaurants out.
Mayor Lurie (who I voted for) is hard at work on gentrifying the entire West Side, which you only need to visit the Outer Sunset to see. Please consider not doing “vibe” food blogging, and treat our neighborhoods like they’re real places with real history.
I’m just a reader here, not affiliated with Mission Local. But I think I can safely say your complaints about the SFGate article would be best addressed to SFGate.
Mission Local in general is not particularly into “curated”, and definitely not “luxe”. If you read some other articles here, I think you’ll see that. Their restaurant reviews normally show only the restaurant itself, not its neighbors, and this was no exception.
As for “ventured”, I agree that if that’s read as connoting danger, then it sounds insulting. Personally I read it as meaning only unfamiliarity — it’s a confession that the author hasn’t spent much time in the Richmond before. Which they’re open about in the preceding sentence, too.