A life formed around food and kitchen with intention, with passion, with love. Has been 31 years, if you can believe it, sometimes I can not… Hem okullu hem alaylı – both educated and professional- as we say in Turkish, my lifelong ambition has been to pursue a career in the food business, and I have navigated my way to this goal.
As a local culinary and gastronomy expert, I love to share my passion for Turkish cuisine on television programs at home and around the world. I still organize long and short term trainings in food and beverage operations, restaurants meeting their needs, providing consultancy from the start up projects to menu, staff, recipes et al…
I created Sapor Istanbul Food Symposium in 2019, a symposium designed to show that food is more than just for feeding, and food is a sociological and anthropological phenomenon that connects societies’ lives from the past to the future, every year addressing a different topic, an old-fashioned symposium. Before that, in 2009, I established the website istanbulfood.com, where I write about food, tales of those who creates it, tradesmen, local products, flavors, food state of the city, and the food culture of Turkish geography. Click me for the detailed business resume
After I graduated from TED Ankara College and Bilkent University Tourism Hotel Management Department, I started working in the food and beverage industry in 1993, and was involved in the opening, operations and management of many international hotels and establishments.
It all started when my granny- my first food hero- told me to wash the tripe, on her old stone kitchen sink. I still remember that day, me on a stool, the running cold water, the intense smell of the tripe surrounding the kitchen.
My stories start and end in Istanbul, my home with my son Deniz and our cats Toko and Lokum.
