The meyhane is a form of eating that Istanbul has been perfecting since the Byzantine period and which, like all truly old things, has been declared finished at regular intervals without actually concluding. In its classical form it is a tavern that serves raki alongside a procession of cold dishes — mezes of every description — followed eventually by grilled fish or meat, arrived at without particular urgency, over several hours, with the understanding that the point is not the meal but the table and the company and the particular light of a Turkish evening. For most of the 2010s, the consensus was that the meyhane was dying, crowded out by modern restaurants with international menus and aspirations that had more to do with Copenhagen than the Bosphorus. Walking through Beyoglu and Karaköy in 2024, I can report that the consensus was wrong.
The revival is not a nostalgia project. The new meyhanes — and there are perhaps a dozen in Beyoglu alone that have opened or been reimagined in the past three years — are operating in the tradition without being imprisoned by it. The raki is still there, and the cold mezes still arrive first, but the sourcing has changed: the fish is from specific boats, the vegetables are from named farms, and the chef — a figure who historically had no name in this context — is increasingly visible and identified with the food being served.
Where to Go
Kiva, on a side street off Istiklal that I've walked past twenty times without noticing, is the best of what I tried. The room seats perhaps forty, with marble-topped tables that are older than the current iteration of the restaurant and walls lined with bottles in the manner of every meyhane that preceded it, but the food belongs to a different register entirely. The cold meze plate on the evening I visited included a smoked aubergine preparation that tasted definitively Turkish and completely unlike anything I'd encountered before, and a yoghurt dish with fresh walnuts and something herbed that I ate with the bread before the bread was intended and then asked for more bread.
The fish — a sea bass, caught that morning, cooked over charcoal on a grill stationed in front of the restaurant and visible from the table — arrived perfectly, with nothing on it except olive oil and lemon. This is the test. A fish cooked without addition requires quality in the fish and precision in the cooking; there is nowhere to hide. At Kiva, it passed.
The new meyhanes are operating in the tradition without being imprisoned by it. The raki is still there. Everything else has changed.
The Raki Question
Raki is an anise spirit drunk diluted with cold water, which turns it the milky white that gives it the name lion's milk. It is not, to be direct about it, universally accessible as a flavour — the anise note is dominant and persistent — but it is the correct drink with this food in this context in a way that becomes clear after the first glass has done its work. The dilution ratio matters: one part raki to one and a half parts water, poured separately over ice, is the classical proportion. More water and you lose the structure. Less and you lose the next three hours.
Several of the new meyhanes are serving natural wine alongside raki, a pairing that would have been unusual five years ago and which now appears without comment on several menus. The combination is less contradictory than it sounds — the lower alcohol of natural wine allows it to sit alongside the spirit without one overwhelming the other — and the orange wines in particular, with their tannin and their particular kind of dryness, work well with the oilier cold preparations.
The Evening Structure
A meyhane dinner is not an experience that benefits from rushing, and attempting to conduct one in under two hours is a category error. Arrive at eight, which in Istanbul is early. Order the cold mezes and take your time with them. The warm dishes — the fried preparations, the börek — arrive when the kitchen decides. The fish or meat comes last. Between courses there is raki and conversation and the slow movement of the evening around you, and the understanding that this is what the table is for.
Istanbul is one of the great food cities of the world — a claim that has sometimes needed defending and currently does not. The meyhane revival is the best argument for this position: a form of eating that is old, entirely local, and more alive now than it has been in twenty years.
