Nadir Gullu’s dessert shop in Karakoy was a special, standalone Gulluoglu defying the franchising and multi-branch expansion craze of his relatives. Nadir Gullu himself stood guard next to the entrance and personally greeted customers for decades. I always admired his desire to maintain full control over the quality of his products.

Ever since this particular Gulluoglu moved from the shoreline of Karakoy to this location farther back, the quality has gone downhill. I do not understand why because I know for a fact that they still make the desserts next door.

I ordered four different kinds of desserts, their baklava, their burma kadayif, their saray sarmasi, and their fistikli sarma, and everything tastes stale and chewy. Every single dessert is devoid of moisture and tastes as if I pulled these desserts out of a prepackaged Gulluoglu box at the airport. What the heck happened?

I am sick and tired of going to my old, reliable haunts in Istanbul, only to find every single one of them serving a subpar version of pretty traditional foods to tourists at exorbitant prices. Please have some pride in your craft. Either increase the prices even more in order to maintain the old ingredients and quality, or just put a sign outside that says “Tourists Only” so that the rest of us know not to go in and order anything.