About

Tuba Şatana was born in 1972, to a Thessaloniki and Mardin compound family. Being raised by a refined grandmother and a true gourmet mother, not to forget her father’s heritage of the gorgeous southeast tastes of Turkey, she took the best of each cultures. While cooking with her granny, learned all about fundamentals of cooking and kitchen. Her mother, living on the coast of Aegean sea, garnished her with all the produce available and unavailable. She started cooking solo in early years, not only copying the recipes from her mother’s books, but adding from herself and creating new ones.

She is a cook, a perfectionist, a traveler, a reader, a dreamer, a photographer, a food writer, a wife and a human.

Now for the curious minds…

After her graduation from Bilkent University, she worked in kitchen and service department in many hotels as part of her training,  starting her way through a successful career in Food and Beverage industry. Tuba participated in pre-opening of an international chain hotel, an international restaurant as well as a university. Tuba was one of the first female F&B managers in an international chain hotel, passing her enthusiasm to the younger generations.  She still leads the way to a successful career, being a guest lecturer and an instructor. She is a freelance consultant for a prestigious organization in tourism industry (TURAD), also culinary advisor and instructor at USLA – AHA,  the new prestigious academy of Istanbul.

She is a member of Chaine des Rotisseurs, L’Ordre Mondial Gourmets Dégustateurs and Slow Food. She also is the founder and owner of www.yiyecekveicecek.com website.

MANIFESTO of ISTANBULFOOD

It all started when I got angry while reading the reviews of the restaurants, small eateries, tradesmen restaurants and other food related places…  Because they were all good, very good!!! It was not fair; not fair because everybody was writing about food, whether they know anything about it or not.
Started calling themselves “gourmet” as if it was a tittle, a tittle you just honor yourself with!!! Then I started writing about my places, my food people, my food heroes. Just local, genuine, comfortable, real… Istanbul Food is about their food and their stories.
If I have to tell you about the manifesto, here you go:
Istanbul Food eats like a regular customer and pays the bill. Since Istanbul Food is against any special treatment, we do not inform the establishments prior to our visits. This is not any website, throwing stars and welldone’s to all restaurants. We actually eat at the places, yes couple of times.  And believe me, most of the times, we did not like what we eat, so we did write them here as well. But our main aim is not to malign the establishments, but to emphasize the real ones, the restaurants or chefs who do this business by heart and respect it.

Istanbul Food is against: Establishments selling a variety from pizza to tripe soup to pide. The local places who are proud of their risotto but can not cook pilav, if you know what we mean… Restaurants serving an inconsistent variety of food, at the same place at the same time.

Istanbul Food encourages and endorses: Real tastes should be eaten out of the hands of the real artisan.

Walking through this path we don’t have and will never have any sponsors, but never turned away tea or coffee offered us. You will read our observations based on our expertise, our own palate, our own pleasure, our own choices, our own money, our own precious time cut from our own work!

Establishments that match our purpose may not be found here simply because we could not possibly find them yet or we didn’t want to write about them. Hence this is not a restaurant guide.

That simple!

Istanbul Food believes food is an art, a serious business, must be handled by the professionals. Istanbul Food believes the emporiums, where you can find anything, create a cultural pollution and one way ticket to an abyss.

Tuba Şatana

Thessaloniki
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