Beyti Güler is among few individuals who can happily say he is the namesake of a popular Turkish dish – the Beyti kebab. It became created in The Güler circle of relatives eating place in Küçükçekmece (now Istanbul) and stemmed from his father’s choice to alternate tempo from a small bakery in 1945, so he and Beyti opened a sixteen-seater grilled meats restaurant.
The unique eating place grew swiftly in recognition because it served doner kebab (sliced rotisserie-style grilled meat), which turned into a rarity at the time.
As the tale is going, on a journey to Switzerland, Beyti Güler met a butcher named Möller, who inspired him to experiment with the eating place’s meat supplying. This caused the Beyti kebab development: a lamb loin wrapped well in a layer of lamb fats and grilled over charcoal on skewers.
Interestingly, this isn’t the kebab that has come to fame nowadays below the Beyti call. Alternatively, it’s a variation that takes a hand-chopped lamb, minced with garlic and parsley, skewered, and grilled over charcoal. The kebab is then wrapped in skinny lavash bread and grilled further to heat before being sliced into bite-sized pieces and thoroughly displayed on a plate with a tomato paste-based totally Iskendae sauce strained yogurt. The resemblance is uncanny.
By then, he ended up with kebab dishes bearing his call – the authentic grilled lamb and the popularised wrapped model now offered abundantly using avenue meals providers across Istanbul and the arena. At Efendy restaurant in Balmain, NSW, chef Somer Sivrioglu places the equal quantity of care into his Beyti kebap as the chefs at Beyti’s namesake eating place (where he now seats a few 500 guests).
Efendy serves several kebab dishes, including the conventional Adana kebab, which uses purple peppers chopped into the lamb meat and fat, earlier than being grilled and served with tomato-soaked bread accompaniments like sumac onions, strained yogurt, and parsley.
“Adana kebab is best one of the styles in Turkey, but it’s one of the most across the world-famend,” he explains.
Sivrioglu says that whilst Turkey is thought for its grilled meat dishes, many homemade meals center on vegetables and grain. “Everyone is aware of approximately the meats – nobody is aware that it’s a vegan and vegetarian paradise.”
This way, kebab has carved its very own niche as an eating-out experience.
“In Turkey, we by and large exit to devour kebabs due to the fact maximum different foods our mums can prepare dinner better at domestic.”
“Many families started humble kebab stores, and now the second generations are open to trying something new and greater delicate,” says Sivrioglu.
“In Turkey, we mainly go out to eat kebabs due to the fact maximum other foods our mums can cook dinner higher at home – however for the kebab, you want a barbecue, so we go to an eating place. For an ordinary Turkish character, going out to eat a kebab is a unique event.”
Beyti’s humble own family meat-eating place – where many Turkish diners loved a special event meal – ran nicely for a few two decades before a piece of writing, published in the New York Herald Tribune, catapulted it into worldwide fame.
The article, titled There’s a Kebab in my Tapestry, information about Beyti’s culinary developments and authority on kebab making, which at the time changed into the idea to were a guidance that Turkey ‘borrowed’ from Germany. The revelation of this sturdy Turkish subculture sent vacationers flocking to Istanbul. In 1983 (after 4 years of creation), Beyti opened a new, considerably larger vicinity in Florya – an upscale residential neighborhood near Atatürk International Airport.
The 500-pax eating place remains run nowadays by Beyti and his two sons Cüneyt and Ahmet and features a terrace and 11 separate dining rooms. He still spends each day at the restaurant and would not pull away from consumer selfies.