Chef collabs building bonds

ISTANBUL

When summer arrives, the tourism industry booms and the food and beverage sector thrives alongside it. Nowadays, people choose their destinations based on the food and drink on offer. Sun, sea and sand are no longer enough. Discovering new flavors and experiencing exciting tastes has become a primary consideration. As the importance of gastronomy tourism has grown, many restaurants and chefs are taking action in this direction. Summer is the time to travel for many chefs. As for them, it is the peak season for gastronomy tourism, but in a different way. Most restaurants in big cities take a month off or sometimes prefer to close totally and move to a summer venue, or at least have a smaller summer outlet, or do pop-ups. For the ones already in summer resorts, it’s the other way around. Contrary to the winter season, the summer months turn out to be the busiest period. It is also the best period to do chef collaborations; a restaurant hosting other fellow chefs to do so-called four hands (or six, or eight hands) tasting dinners, sometimes only for a single night. These chef team-ups seem to be the new trend, not only creating exciting experiences for foodies but also creating an incredible network among chefs across the globe, fueling their creativity and feeding their culinary knowledge about other cuisines of the world.

Gastronomy meetings

Gastronomy conferences, chef meetings and gatherings have been organized in many countries for so many years now. Spain partly owes its rise its rise as a gastronomy destination because of such organizations which have been inspirational to chefs. San Sebastian Gastronomika has been organized in the Basque region of Spain for more than a quarter of a century, and Madrid Fusión in the capital is a congress that serves as a forum for discussion and learning for chefs from across the country. In Türkiye, Gastromasa, which will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, has undertaken such a mission. Founded single-handedly by Gökmen Sözen, from the very start, its motive was to bring world-famous chefs to Türkiye, to inspire their local fellows, to create a network among themselves, and finally to introduce them to Turkish cuisine, cooking techniques and local ingredients. In this way, famed celebrity chefs had the opportunity to meet Turkish cuisine. Over those 10 years, many chefs got to know each other more closely and many became close friends building strong bonds that lead to future collaborations.

Gökmen Sözen is a man like a flying carpet; one day he is pictured with a star here, and the next day he’s at the other end of the globe, posing with another celebrity chef. Due to his non-stop travels to top venues across the globe, he has an immense network of chefs, inviting them not only to Gastromasa in Istanbul but also to other destinations in Türkiye. There were tough times too. Having followed all conferences except the very first one when I had to present at G20 Antalya, I witnessed moments that he has gone through the most stressful times. On the evening of 10 December 2016, the bombings in Beşiktaş caused many casualties, and we were stuck with Albert Adrià and many other chefs from Spain at some drinking hole in Balat. We could not go back to the hotels, but nobody was panicking, instead, all the chefs were trying to console Gökmen. Later deep into the night, the whole lot was seen in Taksim for some late-night street food hunting. That’s when bonds get deeper.

Gault&Millau Touring Türkiye

Knowing that all that matters is the quality of the food that comes out of a kitchen, Sözen had been instrumental in bringing Gault&Millau to Türkiye. The much-praised French restaurant guide is a marker of quality, where restaurants are graded on a scale of 1 to 20, with 20 being the highest. Now, in its second year, this summer a series of Gault&Millau “Signature Dining Experience” events will take place in Istanbul, Urla and Bodrum. The first event in the dinner series took place at Teruar Urla on the evening of 25 June, featuring an eight-course menu prepared by four distinguished chefs. Teruar Urla is one of the most outstanding fine dining restaurants in Urla territory. Founders of Teruar Urla Ezgi Serdaroğlu and Chef Osman Serdaroğlu have created the most exquisite dining venue featuring a menu reflecting the flavors of the Urla terroir. Within a stone's throw away from Urla Winery of Can Ortabaş, and the very newly opened Urla Key Hotel, the venue creates a must-visit corner of Urla, the culinary rising star of the Aegean region.

Teruar Urla, holding one Michelin star and three G&M Toques, and also the 2025 Gault&Millau Türkiye Best Sustainability Award, was the perfect place to host the other three chefs in its kitchen. The guest chefs for the eight-course menu consisted of one local and two international chefs: Ozan Kumbasar again from Urla, Luigi Taglienti from Italy and Karime López from Mexico. Kumbasar is a talent that always shines through in such chef collabs, and I know Taglienti from Italy, which I consider a master of lemons, but the flavors of López were new to me. All the courses reflected the chef’s style, but the most exciting part happens in the kitchen. The harmony, the orchestration and the friendship in the kitchen builds bonds to last. Conferences and meetings are definitely important, they are instrumental to stimulate and inspire chefs, but cooking together is different. There will be more in the series, the next one due 15th of July in Bodrum, another one at Urla, and further in Istanbul, each time featuring a new team-up of chefs. Sometimes they say too many chefs spoil the soup, but miracles can happen too. The miracle is the bonds built through cooking together. Each of these one-night-only dinners is like a cobblestone that will pave the way to create a community of chefs, nurturing creativity and building solidarity for a better future in gastronomy.