Budakaltı: Guests for dinner

By Sibel DORSAN

It may have become a chain but it is still a family business. Diplomat goes behind the scenes at one of Ankara’s favourite restaurants and learns some the recipes of its success – as well as the recipe for Sezai Bey’s “külbastı”.

For all their rushing around from work to shops and shops to kitchen, they could never quite emulate the frequent dinner parties of their childhood. The solution they found was to enter the caterıng business en famille. They still rush around, of course – but now as adult managers, all together with their father. We are talking about the Derer family – better known today as the Budakaltı group. After gaining experience at Madamın Yeri and the Kavaklı Restaurant, the family opened the Budakaltı Brasserie, which they have gradually expanded into a select chain of eating houses and cafes.

Sezai’s secret

I cannot help but ask Ertuğrul Derer the story of a dish which I have previously eaten and which is familiar to all regular customers know: the Sezai Bey usulü kekikli dana külbastı. (Sezai Bey style grilled veal cutlets with thyme). It turns out that a gentleman by the name of Sezai would come to the restaurant every lunchtime and order the very same dish, together with an orange juice. The customer becomes almost part of the family, and his chosen main course becomes so closely identified with him that his name finds its way onto the menu.

Thyme, soybean sauce, tuzot (a mixture of salts and spices), black pepper and sunflower oil are mixed together and the meat is marinated for 3-4 hours. In summer, the meat is served on a bed of hünkarbeğendi (Sultan’s favorite), and in winter, a sauté is prepared of spinach or seasonal vegetables. Accompanied by baked potatoes, the dish is both delicious and pleasing to the eye.

Sezai Bey would not disapprove if you followed it with profiteroles and ice cream - an equally irreplaceable component of the desserts list.

No bosses

The group’s watchword is to provide a good service, and it is constantly seeking to improve. Mr. Derer says he works 24 hours a day. “We are a team,” he goes on. “A hundred people work in this group but nobody is the boss. All decisions about everything are taken jointly. Everyone is responsible in their own way for improving the business, from the menu to the uniforms and from the cleaning to the shopping.”

To succeed in a business in which there are no regular hours or holidays demands commitment and sacrifice. Only by working together for years with the same well-trained personnel has Budakaltı succeeded in becoming a trade-mark.

Original options

There are 50-60 dishes on Budakaltı’s menu. One way of incorporating new tastes is to travel abroad to gastronomy fairs and to adapt the new ideas to Turkish taste. Other dishes are discovered as a result of research done by cook Mehmet Ali, who has been in the job for over 15 years.

The menu is changed three times a year. The more original flavours include soups – some cold! - of carrot, marrow, aubergine, cucumber, asparagus, apple and pear. Then there is celery with orange, chicken in sesame oil sauce, schnitzel framed in shredded tel kadayıf pastry and pumpkin profiteroles.

The cheeses are mostly foreign - French or Italian – although Turkey’s Izmir tulumu and a number of cheeses with peppers and spice are also to be found on the menu. There is a rich cellar of local and foreign wines with which to accompany all this variety.

Customer choice

Burcu Omay, one of the restaurant’s partners, joins in the conversation. While they might themselves wish to make some changes in the menu, she says, it really develops according to the wishes of the customers. She stresses that they regard the customers as guests and their main duty as to satisfy them. She believes that the people of Ankara are less fickle than the folk of Istanbul, and that they will keep coming back provided quality is maintained. Salads are disinfected.

The portions are large, containing 180-200 grams of meat, chicken or fish. No wonder, the customers generally leave the restaurant well satisfied both with the food and with the service.

(DIPLOMAT – April 2005 – Ankara)