Visual is taken from rexby.com
In a city where restaurants appear and disappear with astonishing speed, Yanyalı Fehmi Lokantası is something of a survivor. Hidden in the lively streets of Kadıköy Çarşısı, only a few minutes from the ferry piers, it has been serving Istanbul for more than a century. Yet its story begins not in Istanbul, but across the former Ottoman lands, in Yanya — present-day Ioannina in Greece.
From Yanya to Kadıköy
Fehmi Efendi was born in 1891, the son of Hüseyin Horp, from a prominent family of Yanya. Like thousands of Muslims who left the Balkans during the turbulent final decades of the Ottoman Empire, the family eventually made its way to Istanbul. The name by which Fehmi Efendi would become known — Yanyalı, literally “the man from Yanya” — preserved the memory of that lost geography.
In 1919, while Istanbul itself was entering one of the most uncertain periods in its history, Fehmi Efendi opened a restaurant in Kadıköy. For the kitchen, he recruited Bolulu Hüseyin Efendi, a cook who had left the Ottoman palace kitchens. This connection is important: Yanyalı Fehmi was not simply serving inexpensive everyday food. From its beginnings, it brought together the traditions of the Ottoman palace kitchen, regional Balkan cooking and the emerging culture of Istanbul’s esnaf lokantası.
Fehmi Efendi himself had a dramatic encounter with the political turmoil of the period. According to the restaurant’s family history, during the Allied occupation of Istanbul he was detained by the British and became seriously ill while imprisoned. He recovered and returned to his business, eventually becoming successful enough to open additional branches in Beyoğlu and Sirkeci. Those branches disappeared, but Kadıköy remained.
The Istanbul Esnaf Lokantası
To understand Yanyalı Fehmi, one also has to understand a particular Istanbul institution: the esnaf lokantası.
These restaurants developed around the daily rhythms of the city. Shopkeepers, craftsmen, office workers and neighbourhood residents came not for elaborate tasting menus but for food that resembled the cooking of a very good household kitchen: soups, stews, vegetables cooked in olive oil, pilafs, stuffed vegetables, meat dishes and desserts displayed behind a glass counter.
At Yanyalı Fehmi, however, this everyday tradition acquired an unusually large repertoire. Over the decades the restaurant became known for dishes such as Hünkar Beğendi, Elbasan Tava, Acem Tavuğu, Yanya Köftesi, soğanlı yahni, iç pilav, güllaç and kadayıf — dishes that collectively reveal the extraordinary geographical range of Ottoman cuisine.
This may be the restaurant’s greatest cultural significance. Recipes that might otherwise survive only in old cookbooks continue to exist here as ordinary food. They are cooked, ordered, eaten and remembered.
A Family Restaurant for More Than a Century
Fehmi Efendi, who took the surname Sönmezler after the introduction of surnames in Turkey, died in Kadıköy in 1980. The restaurant passed to the next generation and later to his grandchildren. More than a hundred years after its foundation, it remains a family business.
Its longevity has also received international recognition. The Michelin Guide currently lists Yanyalı Fehmi with a Bib Gourmand, an award given to restaurants offering particularly good food at reasonable prices. Michelin describes it as a piece of “living history” and notes that the establishment is now run by the third generation of the family.
Eating Istanbul’s History
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Yanyalı Fehmi is that it has never become a museum.
You do not enter to look at reconstructed Ottoman dishes behind glass. You point at the trays, choose what looks good, sit down and eat. Around you, Kadıköy continues at full speed — shopkeepers calling to customers, fishmongers arranging their stalls, ferries crossing the Bosphorus and thousands of people passing through the market.
And yet the food carries another Istanbul within it.
The story of Yanyalı Fehmi contains many of the forces that created the modern city: migration from the former Ottoman Balkans, the disappearance of the imperial court, the survival of palace culinary traditions, the rise of neighbourhood restaurants and the transmission of knowledge through generations of one family.
That is why Yanyalı Fehmi is more than one of Kadıköy’s oldest restaurants. It is one of those rare places where Istanbul’s history has remained part of everyday life.
More than a century after Fehmi Efendi arrived from Yanya, you can still walk into his restaurant in Kadıköy, sit down at a table and quite literally taste the memory of the city. Don’t miss it!
Yanyalı Fehmi Lokantası
Osmanağa Mahallesi, Yağlıkçı İsmail Sokak No: 1, Kadıköy, Istanbul.
Visit it at yanyalifehmi.com.
All food visuals are taken from Yanyalı Fehmi’s website.
