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In this restaurant, we have really important core values. One of them is sustainability. We really care about sustainability. We don't use plastic. We don't use paper towels. If we have to use, for example, in restrooms, we have to use, but all of them are recycled and recyclable. Okay, let's say like this. We care about seasonal products and local products. In the kitchen, I don't use any imported goods, just Turkish ingredients. The other thing which is really important to us is zero waste approach. We have our own compost machine and we have a small garden. We use them as fertilizer there. And we separate our food waste and we want to reuse them in many ways.
Like I said, mostly we use them as fertilizing agents, but we think like this. For example, we have a cucumber and we just want to use the green side, not the inside. We don't want to go to ease way and we want to put a value on it and reuse it again. This kitchen, I can say rooted on Turkish cuisine. We get our inspiration from our land or from our culture, but we modernize it sometimes. My name is Bahtiyar. I'm the executive chef of Turkey's only plant-based restaurant. I've been in this industry for almost 20 years. And for last 4 years, I'm working on plant-based uh let's say cuisine. It's one of my best stories to tell. Actually, I studied
archaeology. I never trained as a chef. I've never attended a gastronomy course or something. Uh but it was my first profession that I decided when I was like 7 or 8. It's a typical story every chef says, I learned cooking first from my mother. I cooked my first meal without my mom. I was enjoying the time in the kitchen. I said, "Okay, it's a good thing." And I learned more and more. I spent a lot of time. I was looking at watch and when it 6:00 I was running to home and work with my mom. My mother's side, they are from Thrace and my father from Malatya. Like a typical Turkish house, we have a lot of olive oil dishes because my father used to hate okra and leeks. My mom rarely cooked them. But within time, when my mom say,
"Would you like to try something else?" like celeriac, I entered the plant-based world in my mom's kitchen. I wanted to study in a French cooking school. Back that time, my father said, "It's impossible." But I studied archaeology, so I always work in the kitchens while I was student. I work in fishmongers, in butchers, in Italian restaurants. I was writing my master thesis and I said, "No, academic life is not for me." I quit everything and start this as a professional job. When I was in university, I want I started to travel a lot. Some Anatolian places. It was that time that I discovered in our cuisine we have a lot of vegetable dishes. If you go to Adana, there's chickpea durum or in Izmir, there's a lot of herbs. And I've
never known that. I mostly work with local and small farmers. Like I can say from the very beginning we are getting our beans from a specific area, from specific provider. I like to use Erzincan Şeker Fasulyesi, which is super specific and mostly not known. Let's say we want to make a take on risotto. We're not going an Italian rice. It's Italian technique, Italian dish, but we use Karacadağ rice and it's directly coming here. Sometimes local farmer, sometimes local seller. So, we always want to make the right impact and right approach to the ingredient and the farmer. And the other thing is sustainability measures. To make a restaurant and the industry sustainable, you need to use them when they are at their season
because otherwise you need more space, more water, you need to add chemicals and this kills the nature. Also, it has a lot of workforce, carbon emission. For example, watermelons. In the summer menu we use a lot of watermelons. With the skin we make mostly jams or for eggplants with if you don't want to use the skins we make food coloring out of it. We all need to not say, let's say let's be more inclusive. We need to understand our land and culture and the cuisine better because we only care about the generic items or dishes or recipes, but we have more than that. To help Turkish cuisine internationally, so where is Turkish cuisine in this? To promote Turkish cuisine, we need to understand what they cook at home in
Anatolia and what was the culture, what was the history. Because household dishes, they are the foundation. They are the roots. For me, I discovered variety of our cuisine like this. If you learn Anatolian house cooking, you can master plant-based, not just plant-based, but a lot of things in Turkish cuisine.
