This Turkish chef serves visual feasts

MANILA, Philippines - Our friend Cheryl Tiu never stops unearthing new gems in her pursuit of world cuisine. Her latest find involves award-winning Turkish restaurant Neolokal fronted by chef Maksut Askar, the flavors of which she brought to Manila on June 16 and 17 with her latest “Cross Cultures by Cheryl Tiu” event at Flame restaurant in Discovery Primea.

Cheryl met chef Askar, whom Time Out magazine named “Chef of the Year” in 2015, during a trip to Istanbul and was taken by his cuisine at Neolokal, which, as its name suggests, focuses on the ingredients local to his native country of Turkey (historically part of the region called Anatolia), and giving them a modern spin. It seems that in this Chef’s Table age, chefs like Askar are rediscovering ancient methods of regional cooking and reimagining them on the plate.

To introduce the young Turk’s New Anatolian cuisine to Manila diners, Cheryl chose an apt location, the Modern European restaurant Flame. Located on the 16th floor of five-star hotel Discovery Primea, it boasts a scenic view of Makati similar to Neolokal’s sweeping panorama of Istanbul.

First we must mention the bread, a sourdough roll called neylan eksi. It’s wonderful spread with butter from Camlihemsin at the Black Sea, and parsley-infused olive oil from Ayvalik, Aegea — locations that sound as exotic as those in Game of Thrones.

After we’d torn off hunks of this tasty, crusty-soft bread, dragged them through a hedonistic mixture of the butter and oil and devoured them like cave people, chef Askar’s 10-course menu began in earnest with a trio of amuse-bouche, which in Turkey would qualify as meze — the small dishes they serve before a multi-course meal, typically accompanied by drinks. (For this dinner, Katherine Yao-Santos of Happy Living Corp. was the official beverage partner.)

We quickly fell in love with the Ayran Asi, a cold yogurt soup that came in a demitasse cup. Lifting the Melba toast on top revealed a Crayola assortment of colors — six, in fact — and textures. Little balls of popped wheat provided the creamy yogurt a cereal-like crunch, while fresh chickpeas (a staple in the chef’s childhood) and infused oil supplied flavor.

The Midye & Tarator, a mussel fried in sour yeast served with a tarator, or traditional Turkish dipping sauce made with walnuts, garlic and breadcrumbs, was one bite of pure pleasure. According to the little booklet of story cards the chef provided with the menu, fried mussels are a star street food in Istanbul, symbolizing the bounty of the Bosphorus and Aegean Sea.

If we had any lingering doubts about the geographic origins of this meal, the third small plate, Cig Kofte, quashed them with a beef-and-bulgur meatball bursting with Middle Eastern flavors.

Chef Askar, who’s mounted exhibitions in Turkey of both modern and food art, betrayed his art background with the next two dishes: Kavun-Peynir, his take on the pre-meze appetizer of melon and cheese, was a visual stunner, featuring an array of melon cut to look like tiles and laid out to form an abstract cross. With its varying shades of yellow and orange, green parsley and dabs of red sumac spice, it reminded us of the mosaics in Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace.

Next came the Double-Baked Tahini Houmus — probably the most literal sign that our dinner was like journeying through Turkish lands. Designed by chef Askar to resemble the spice road that passes through Mesopotamia, mini mountain ranges were carved along its surface, with a sunny side-up quail egg to denote the sun. Chef Askar baked no less than 16 herbs and spices into the multi-colored “earth”: he made special powders of ingredients like cabbage, beets, mint, tarragon, cumin, sumac, turmeric, and porcini, and sprinkled them artfully over the hummus landscape.

“I’m lucky to be in Turkey because we have a very powerful background in spices,” he told us.

Askar has such a strong visual sense that we asked him if he thinks about what a dish will look like when conceptualizing it.

“Yes, depending on the dish,” he replied. “First I decide what to combine with what, then I create the recipe. Because once you know about the tastes, you already know what fits best with what. The rest is easy, actually.”

The visual feast continued, from grilled octopus served with yellow gambilya bean paste to the terracotta crimsons of Uveyik — another wheat dish, this time with the grains slow-cooked for seven hours to a risotto-like al dente-ness.

In the meat course Katmer & Tirit, Askar used Jackson Pollock streaks of white, yellow and orange yogurt as a foil for the tirit — beef slow-cooked in duck stock — sandwiching it in between katmer — Anatolian filo pastry decadently fried in duck fat.

After seven courses we felt giddy — not just from the richness of the food — but with the satiation of our eyes being as well fed as our stomachs. But more was yet to come.

For dessert, we were presented with a crispy pumpkin that reminded Therese of kundol (candied wintermelon). An old Turkish technique similar to the way we make kundol involves boiling the fruit in sugar water before resting it in a limestone-water mixture to get it crisp. Served with a tahini parfait and sesame croquants, this dish, which Discovery Primea general manager David Pardo de Ayala cited as one of his favorites, reminds chef Askar of his childhood: his grandmother’s neighbors making crispy pumpkin for a living, as well as the street vendors selling croquants in his grandmother’s neighborhood.

Two kinds of baklava followed, as well as Turkish petits fours: Pismaniye angel-hair candy, which brought Therese back to her own cotton-candy childhood days, black poppy-seed tuiles, and lokum — fragrant rose Turkish delight that was so sticky it had us licking our fingers like kids.

Chef Askar’s menu was playful and forward thinking, mixing the best of Anatolian ingredients with a pop presentation. “If I didn’t study tourism and hotel management, I would definitely have studied design,” Askar said of his colorful food plating. “I’ve had exhibitions in Istanbul, solo and mixed, on food art. That gives me good ideas.”

It was another of Cheryl Tiu’s good ideas to bring a bit of Anatolia to Makati’s foodscape.