Denizler Kasap&Mangal — Restaurant in Beyoğlu

Visited in July 2025. Turkey 🇹🇷 Istanbul.

Denizler Kasap & Mangal is a tiny café specializing in the sale of meat products, tucked away just off the city’s busiest tourist street. With only a couple of tables, its modest size adds to its charm, and we visited based on enthusiastic reviews.

FOOD:

The menu is quite limited. They feature a grill where they cook the meat, and the reviews were so glowing that we were eager to try it out—honestly, we didn’t quite see the hype. We ordered Adana kebab, an eggplant salad, and lamb shashlik. The eggplant salad was tasty but overly heavy with mayonnaise, making it feel greasy and hard to enjoy. The Adana kebab was edible, yet it lacked juiciness and richness, with a slight sour note we suspect came from the marinade. The lamb shashlik was the biggest disappointment—tough to the point where I could only manage a couple of bites.

SERVICE:

This small café seems to be run by the owner himself, who also handles the cooking. Everything felt friendly, with a personal touch to the service.

VERDICT:

Overall, we didn’t quite grasp the source of the rave reviews. Our takeaway is that if you’re looking for a cheap meal and the place draws you in with its lower prices compared to tourist hotspots, it’s an option just to fill up and save some money. But if you’re after authentic flavor and real quality, this spot might let you down, so approach those reviews...

The food is amazing and so is the service. We visited on our first night here and ended up coming back three times in our four nights it was so good. We had the mixed grill twice and the lamb ribs once. Everything is cooked perfectly and with so much flavour! The portions are big, we would get one plate to share between two people and it was always the perfect amount. We also tried a durum wrap with lamb, really good value only 190 lira! It’s a small family run restaurant, they are so lovely and have a very cute little boy that comes and plays with you while you wait for your food. The meat is really fresh it looks like they butcher it themselves and locals buy from there as well. It doesn’t smell like a butcher though and everything is wrapped/packaged well - really hygienic place they are always wearing gloves when they touch the food. The bread comes fresh and warm and even the salad is so good the dressing is really yummy! Can’t recommend highly enough it’s the best food we ate in Istanbul and we already want...

Got the spicy adana kebab and it was absolutely amazing. Kebab was well seasoned and very juicy, one of the best I've had. It comes with salad, some type of barley pilaf and bread. All in all, a very tasty, balanced and filling meal, for a reasonable price. Would definitely love to come back again !

Service is also excellent, the people there are really nice. It's a small family owned restaurant in a butcher's shop, so do not expect any fancy vibe or anything, rather it's a cozier place that'll make you feel like you're eating a nice homecooked meal.

I do advise not to sit inside as it's a bit hot, but sitting outside in the cooler temperature of the night was...