Pandeli Restaurant

Pandeli Restaurant

Istanbul is a city where the restaurant scene changes at thunderlight speed; many new venues open every year and many are closed. Very few stay forever. Pandeli is one of those culinary “institutions” of the city that has been around for more than a hundred years.

The restaurant’s story began modestly. Pandeli Çobanoğlu, an Anatolian Greek who came to Istanbul at an early age to work as a porter, first worked around the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar. He started selling meatball sandwiches from a small wooden shack in Çukur Han. As intellectuals, writers and politicians of the period became regulars, the humble eatery quickly gained a reputation, and later that same year the first proper restaurant opened in Eminönü. Today, the restaurant occupies its iconic location on the second floor of the Spice Bazaar. The airy, museum-like dining hall, covered in magnificent blue tiles, has become as legendary as the cuisine itself.

Famous guests of Pandeli Restaurant

Pandeli soon became a gathering place for the city’s leading figures. Among its distinguished guests were Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of the Turkish Republic, as well as Celal Bayar, Adnan Menderes and poet Ahmed Haşim. International names followed over the decades, including American Ambassador George McGhee, Queen Elizabeth II, Audrey Hepburn, Robert De Niro, John Malkovich, Peter Ustinov, Sarah Jessica Parker and Sean Connery. It is even said that during his years in Ankara, Atatürk would occasionally place special orders from Pandeli and have dishes sent from Istanbul to the capital by train when hosting important guests.

What should I order at Pandeli Restaurant?

Pandeli’s menu offers some of the all-time favorites of Istanbul dwellers. The restaurant’s döner kebab is exemplary, as they still cook it with charcoal fire. Make sure to try eggplant pie with a leaf of döner kebab on top; Kastamonu pastrami with keşkek wheat stew; Hünkar beğendi (Sultan’s delight, a typical lamb stew served on mashed roasted eggplant) or pilaf with Black Sea anchovies. The dessert selection here is also unmissable with classical fare like Kazandibi (caramelized bottom milk pudding of chicken breast) and Ayva tatlısı (oven-baked quinze in thick syrup with clotted buffalo cream).