Famous restaurants in Istanbul: Michelin stars, Nusr-Et, Çiya and old sweet shops

There is no single ranking of the “best restaurants in Istanbul”, and gezdir.me does not compile one. The most verifiable reference is the Michelin Guide: its 2026 selection for Türkiye, announced in early December 2025, has two restaurants with two stars, fifteen with one star, 39 with a Bib Gourmand and 171 establishments in all across Istanbul, İzmir, Muğla and Cappadocia. In the guide's own definition, the Bib Gourmand goes to places with excellent food at an affordable price. For the other famous names — Nusr-Et, Çiya, Hafız Mustafa, Karaköy Güllüoğlu — below is what can be checked on their own websites: menus, dated prices and the history the businesses tell about themselves.

Michelin stars in Istanbul

In its press release on the 2026 selection, Michelin names three Istanbul restaurants. TURK Fatih Tutak kept its two stars and also holds a Green Star, which the guide gives to restaurants whose practices impressed the inspectors. Araf, run by chefs Kenan and Pınar Çetinkaya, received one star for the first time. One-star Neolokal also holds a Green Star, and its sommelier Ersin Topkara received the Michelin Sommelier Award. Neolokal, led by chef Maksut Aşkar, is in the SALT Galata building on Bankalar Caddesi in Karaköy, below the hill with Galata Tower.

The release does not list the city's other one-star restaurants; the full list, with filters by city and distinction, is on the guide's website. Neolokal does not publish the price of its tasting menu on its website, so check it when you book. The list will change soon: on 3 December 2026 Michelin will announce its first selection covering the whole of Turkey, Euronews reported on 9 October 2026. After that date restaurants' stars may change.

Nusr-Et: what dinner at Salt Bae's costs

Nusr-Et is chef Nusret Gökçe's chain of steakhouses; the chain's own website calls a visit “The Iconic Saltbae Experience”. It has four restaurants in Istanbul: Etiler, Maçka Palas, İstinye Park and Grand Bazaar. The chain publishes its prices in an online menu, linked from the İstinye Park restaurant page. According to this menu, valid from 23 May 2026 (prices in lira, VAT included, checked on 7 November 2026), the main dishes cost:

• Nusr-Et burger — 950–1,650 TL; Lokum burger with slices of tenderloin — 1,125 TL;
• 600 g tomahawk — 3,900 TL;
• Nusr-Et Special, thinly sliced tenderloin on butter with sea salt — 5,100–13,750 TL;
• kuzu kafes, 1.4 kg of lamb ribs on the bone — 5,800 TL;
• dishes in 24-carat gold leaf — from 3,000 TL for the Golden Burger to 14,000 TL for a 1.1 kg tomahawk;
• signature havuç dilimi baklava with ice cream — 675–1,350 TL.

Where a range is given, the price depends on the portion size. Drinks are on a separate menu. The İstinye Park restaurant is open daily from noon to ten in the evening. Menus at the chain's other restaurants may differ: open the menu on the page of the restaurant you want or via the QR code on site.

Çiya in Kadıköy: what to order

Three places operate under the Çiya name, a few metres apart in the Kadıköy fish market (Balıkçılar Çarşısı) on the Asian shore. On its website Çiya says it all began with a modest eatery where people came for kebab and lahmacun; later Sofra and another kebab shop opened next door. The site describes the cuisine as gathered from a vast territory: from Mesopotamia and the Ottoman heritage to the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Arabian Peninsula.

The sensible order here is what you rarely find in an ordinary restaurant. The kebab section of the website lists about thirty items, among them fruit kebabs: with sour cherry (Vişne Kebabı), with loquat and with peach. There are more than fifty desserts, many of them regional: a tomato dessert with almonds and sesame, sweets made from aubergine and from green walnut skins, and Kayseri-style katmer with tahini.

The website has a “Daily menu” section, where dishes are posted day by day, and gives the opening hours: 11:00 to 22:00. The site does not publish prices, so ask before you order.

Hafız Mustafa and Karaköy Güllüoğlu: sweets with a history

Hafız Mustafa traces its history back to 1864. According to the shop's website, it was founded by Hacı İsmail Hakkı Bey in Bahçekapı near Eminönü: in the shop's basement he made akide şekeri, hard sugar candies, by hand in a stone mortar called a dibek. His son Hafız Mustafa, whose name the brand bears, carried on the business. Today the range includes baklava, kadayıf, pastries, muhallebi (milk puddings), Turkish delight, drinks and breakfasts. If you want to taste what the shop started with, take the akide candies and Turkish delight; the website gives no prices.

No official ranking decides who bakes the best baklava. Karaköy Güllüoğlu is a family baklava shop in Karaköy. Murat Güllü, of the family's sixth generation, told Ekonomist magazine in 2021 that the family craft began in 1843 in Gaziantep and that the family has worked in Istanbul since the 1950s. The shop's website would not open for checking, so its prices and opening hours are not given here. How protected Antep baklava differs from the rest is explained in the article on Gaziantep.

By the Bosphorus: views, fish and the season

No official source keeps a list of restaurants “with a Bosphorus view”, and the Michelin press release does not mention views. What you can rely on is the neighbourhood. GoTürkiye, the portal of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, names Çengelköy on the Asian shore of the strait, together with Yedikule, as a district with a long tradition of meyhanes — taverns serving meze, where the cooking is passed down from generation to generation.

With fish, the season matters. Under an order of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, in force until 31 August 2028, trawlers and purse seiners (gırgır) do not fish in the seas around Istanbul from 15 April to 31 August (in the Mediterranean the ban lasts until 15 September), while traditional small-scale coastal boats keep going out during this time; the ministry announced the start of the 2026 ban on 13 April, the DHA agency reported. So in summer it is especially useful to ask which fish is on today and where it comes from, and also whether the price is per portion or per kilogram.

The simplest option by the water is balık ekmek on the Eminönü waterfront near the Spice Bazaar. A dinner on board with a show is described on the Bosphorus cruise page.

Kebab and coffeehouses: no rankings, but a history

There is no official ranking of Istanbul's kebab shops either. The best-documented story is that of İskender, and it leads out of the city — to Bursa and the Kebapçı İskender eatery.

Istanbul has a special relationship with coffeehouses. According to the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, the city's first coffeehouses were opened in the Tahtakale quarter in 962 AH (1554–1555) by two newcomers, Hakem from Aleppo and Şems from Damascus; the historian Peçevî wrote about this. The authorities closed them more than once, the last time under Murad IV in 1633, after which the state moved from bans to supervision. No one officially rates today's coffeehouses, so no specific addresses are given here. Restaurants and cafés in Turkish cities are collected in the Restaurants section of gezdir.me.

Photo: İhsan Deniz Kılıçoğlu · CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%C3%87engelk%C3%B6y.jpg)