Women peel tomatoes under early morning sunshine in a large walled courtyard that resembles The Mad Hatter’s tea party. Beds, baths, lamps and mirrors are strewn around a smattering of dining tables, conservatories, piles of vintage dinnerware and crates of vegetables.
The temperature is in the early thirties, the focus at restaurant Asma Yaprağı is on the tomatoes – it’s coming to the end of the season so they are being peeled, chopped and simmered into endless jars of sauce.
This more organic view of Turkey is a far cry from what the country is largely known for: the kebab. While that is changing, it’s hard to remove the imprint of a satisfying juicy doner after a night out. Which was why I was intrigued to visit Izmir, and more specifically, Urla, a region less than an hour’s drive west of the city of Izmir and one that is quietly getting a name for itself as the country’s rising gastronomic star. Since 2023, when the Michelin guide decided to extend its coverage beyond Istanbul, seven restaurants in this community got a mention while three went on to get stars.
Ayşe Nur Mıhcı, the co-founder of Asma Yaprağı (located a half hour’s drive from Urla in Alacati) and holder of a green Michelin star for the restaurant’s sustainable practices, proudly serves a variety of dishes for a traditional Turkish breakfast.
Plates of homemade spicy tomato sauce, salted cows’ cheese with mulberry jam, kaymak with honey, all to be mopped up with lokma (fried sweet dough). This accompanies the choice of either eggs menemen or potato omelette, washed down with hourglass cups of Turkish black tea. Alongside her son, Kerem, who manages the operational aspect of the business, Asma has been pioneering the farm-to-table philosophy for the last 15 years in the area. Items are sourced from their farm as well as local producers in order to “give our recipes a more seasonal character”, she says.
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Working with local producers is of paramount importance to these chefs. At lunch at Teruar in Urla, chef Osman Serdaroğlu had a regional map drawn to accompany the menu detailing where he sourced his ingredients: olive oil from nearby Uzbas Farm, blue-tailed shrimp from Özbek, and aubergine from İçmeler. The holder of a Michelin star, Teruar offers only one dining option: its tasting menu (approximately £100 per person). Again, tomatoes are a big event and form the spine around which the other 12 dishes rotate. Highlights include an okra caponata with a crunch similar to halva and the tempura bluefin tuna with samphire on a fresh green pepper sauce. Wine, like everything else on the table, comes from a small vineyard just 10 minutes away, featuring the indigenous grape, calkarasi.
Whether written on the map or used in conversation to talk about the region, the one thing that’s noticeable from the chefs and producers is their tendency to refer to their country as Anatolia, acknowledging that the land’s history stretches far beyond modern-day Turkey. The past is very much present in the region’s wineries, none more so than at one of the biggest, Urla Şarapçılık. What initially began as an arboretum evolved into something bigger as the owners discovered the ruins of ancient vineyard terraces in addition to more surprises beneath the soil.
“We were digging with a machine when we hit something,” co-founder Can Ortabas recalls over a wine tasting with some of the area’s winemakers before lunch. “We stopped so we could start digging by hand and found amphorae [ancient jars or jugs]. At first, we thought we’d struck gold. But we struck better than gold because gold you can spend but wine you cannot spend.”
Archaeologists found that the amphorae contained traces of wine and dated back to the Ionian period some 6,000 years ago when Urla was known as Klazomenai, motivating Ortabas to do more research on the peninsula’s history. “Seventy-two million litres of wine was produced per year only on this little peninsula between Çeşme, Alacati and Urla. Just last year, all of Turkey produced 69 million litres of wine, less than this little peninsula.”
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Aware of the importance of viniculture from his travels to Tuscany, Napa and Bordeaux, Ortabaş set about creating the Urla wine route with other winemakers in the area. Ten years on, it had 273,000 visitors last year according to Urla Vineyard Route management, with nearly half of those visiting Urla winery, making it one of the most visited in Europe. Driving around in a buggy after the tasting, Ortabas stops to point out the clay limestone soil, which, with the dry and sunny climate, is “perfect for winemaking”. From the top of the hill, I can make out the Greek island of Samos in the distance, the winds from the nearby Aegean sea important for the vineyard’s prize-winning bold reds.
“Wine is just a little picture in the big picture,” Ortabas says. “Making wine is influencing so many things. For example, in south Anatolia, there is an amazing food culture but there is no wine. If there is no wine, it can never be international; wine is the best friend of gastronomy. That’s why we all push to welcome the chefs and now they keep on coming.”
One such chef is Osman Sezener, who arguably had the biggest role in putting Urla on the culinary map with his restaurant Od Urla, which has since won both a Michelin star and a Michelin green star. Tables are dotted around an olive grove where fairy lights overhead cast a soft glow. Sezener, after training in New York French Culinary School and working in various kitchens abroad, returned home in 2018 to open Od Urla, where he upholds a zero-waste policy.
“It’s our philosophy that it’s farm to table service, from farmers to consumer,” says Sezener. Indeed, every single plate uses one or more of the ingredients from Od Urla’s 345 acres of farmland, otherwise, it uses local ingredients from a nearby producer. From the tasting menu (from £87 per person; there is also an à la carte option), the standout is fig-three-ways: soft cheese in fig leaf oil, savoury fig ice cream on a crumb base, and another cloud of soft cheese under a prone fig. For those looking to go from farm to table to bed, there’s a guesthouse onsite with eight rooms.
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The next day I leave Urla in the direction of Izmir to Isabey vineyard. Airplanes fly overhead from the nearby airport as the third-generation owner, Enis Güner, tells me how his grandfather helped to increase the growth of Muscat grapes in the region. Isabey is one of Turkey’s biggest exporters, producing more than 17 million bottles annually.
To fully appreciate the wine, visitors can accompany it with food from the vineyard’s restaurant, mentioned in the Michelin guide – but Güner has his sights on a star. I’m sold by the smoked calamari alone. Cooked on a wood fire, it sits on a bed of sourdough crumbs that have gone buttery in a puddle of local olive oil, garlic and parsley, sharpened by the crisp sauvignon blanc from the vines a few metres away. If the chefs keep coming, it’s only time before more visitors will, too.
Travel essentials
Where to stay
Antmare Hotel in Alaçatı Mah is a chic, boutique escape blending modern elegance with charming local flair.
How to get there
Pegasus Airlines flies from London Stansted Airport to İzmir Adnan Menderes International Airport.
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