Neolokal — Restaurant in Beyoğlu

Got food poisoning from here. Ruined the rest of my trip in Istanbul.

Aside from food poisoning (because we can never be 100% sure where it comes from) the food, service and atmosphere were still underwhelming.

FOOD Multiple dishes were under seasoned such as the shrimp/scallop dish and the black bass dish. The final menu item, the slow cooked lamb, was actually terrible. The meat was overcooked, the garnish on top was practically inedible, and the amuse bouche "sandwich" that's meant to be eaten beforehand is basically a tart shell filled with burnt bread crumbs. Their iconic mushroom dumpling dish was also strange. They introduce it with a video shown on an ipad that is visually really cool but does not explain the dish itself. I was confused on how to eat it when it arrived. It comes as a plate of foam covered with a mushroom sheet (? I don't know what it was tbh) which completely hides the dish. I didn't know there was a dumpling until I accidentally took a bite of it under the foam. The only flavor you will get is mushroom, which might be their intention, but I think mushrooms need something to balance the earthy notes in my opinion.

SERVICE We were the first table to be seated that evening and yet no one explained anything to us. There are about 3 different booklets that talk about ingredients, the restaurant concept and local wine grapes but no one explains the importance of reading them. We were seated, shown the menu and asked for our drinks. Normally Michelin restaurants welcome guests, explain the evening and generally make you feel welcomed which was not the case here. Then, I ordered a spicy margarita cocktail that was especially spicy and when I told a waiter this, nothing was done about it. We also had to ask multiple times for a wine menu and when talking to the sommelier, the only descriptions he provided for wine were 'light' and 'dry'. Perhaps there was a language barrier? If so, Neolokal should try to put the best English speakers at their international tables. We have dined at other michelin restaurants in Italy, Portugal, Malta, Slovenia, and others across Europe and never encountered this problem before. Additionally, as the evening progressed and more tables were seated, we were forgotten. We sat there for a long time without water and no food in front of us before we finally got someone's attention to get the bill.

ATMOSPHERE The restaurant is tricky to find when you first enter the building. No one directs you where to go and there is no signage (it's up the stairs in the cafe on the ground floor). The view is definitely nice but with the entire restaurant made of windows and the evening sun hitting it directly, it was SO hot in this restaurant. When we were there, they kept the one door to the patio open all night, but still we were sweating the entire evening. No one apologized for the heat. I saw another guest become extremely upset by the high temperatures inside and they offered him a cool towel. Why not just turn on the air conditioning? We were there in spring where temps were max. 18 degrees and I know it gets much hotter in the summer. Seems like a flaw in the...

No Michelin star yet for this restaurant with attitude and ambition

N41°1.423' E28°58.384' Michelin has no guide to Turkish restaurants, but Neolokal was mentioned in one of their stories as a favourite restaurant for visiting chefs. We reserved a table on their sophisticated internet website in August 2021. The entrance to Neolokal is in an old building on Bankalar Avenue of the Istanbul branch of the Central Bank of Turkey, but the restaurant is in a modern extension overlooking the Golden Horn, Suleymaniye Mosque and the Bazaar district. The restaurant has indoor and terrace dining facilities.

Chef and partner of Neolokal, Maksut Aşkar, opened this restaurant in late 2014 and surprised local and international palates with his exciting twists on traditional Turkish dishes. For his dishes, he uses ingredients listed in the Slow Food Foundation's Ark of Taste. In August 2021, we needed our smartphones to access the menu via QR code. We do not think this innovation will catch on in Parisian one-star Michelin restaurants. The short menu is a bit complicated and needed explanation. To keep it simple for ourselves, we opted for the vegetarian 5-course menu with matching wine (₺ 450).

To be honest, the courses had a great launch towards space with very tasty starters, but the main course did not reach the orbit. We did not like the breadcrumbs and the main course was unimpressive. It lacked flavour and texture and did not have the distinctive signature that a main course in a major restaurant should have. It was not ready to be a small appetiser. An ice cream dessert was served with the breadcrumbs again. Very dry bite.

The accompanying wine was made from Riesling grapes and tasted very good. Good choice. We did not like the glassware of Nude. We prefer wine glasses with stems.

Service started very professional. The waiter understood the unspoken needs of their guests by placing a small table for the ladies’ bag, but during our dinner we started missing him and suddenly we had three waiters serving us in an uncoordinating way. It is difficult to maintain personal contact and connection with guests in a crowded restaurant, but this is what good waiters excel at. When our waiter returned with the bill, he behaved in an overly enthusiastic and friendly manner. Was there anything to compensate?

Neolokal has attitude and ambition, started very well, but could not maintain its trajectory towards the Michelin stars....

Neolokal does not deserve its Michelin star.

I was looking forward to this experience. We drove all the way from Denmark by car to visit Neolokal because it has got a Michelin star and got a very good recommendation in my daily newspaper Politiken. I am sorry to say that we got very disappointed, it is not worth it. We got better food in Berlin, Brno, Belgrad and Plovdiv.

At Neolokal we got their 6 dishes plus a wine pairing: First dish was an alright vegetarian dish with pumpkin and celery. second dish was named 'Red shrimp and scallops', I was particular looking forward to this. There was one red shrimp plus two baby shrimps, but certainly not 'scallops' in plural, there was a tiny little maybe quarter or sixths of A scallop. I was not delighted and will say that the wine was the best part of second dish. Third dish was a morel dumpling which was certainly in Michelin class, though the rose wine pairing was a bit odd. Fourth dish was black bass. I am indeed a lover of nice fish. Sorry to say but I got a better sea bass at a more simple restaurent in Istanbul. We got a pale red wine as pairing, which was maybe a good match if the black bass had been better. Fifth dish was a very good young and juicy lamb dish with nice side orders and a very good matching red wine. Michelin quality. Sixth dish was a dessert called 'reveni with rose' a collection of sweets with rose taste, which reminded me of cheap toilet scent. Fortunately was the matching dessert wine fresh and nice and could almost take the bad taste of toilet scent. The most annoying part of the Neolokal experience was that I was presented to an I-pad and a headset to get a strange maybe artictic presentation. I am sorry to say I didn't get the clou. Maybe they gave me the wrong preentation? I came to Neolokal to enjoy good food and wine, and a strange video can't compensate for a bad gourmet experience

I might stop my prescription of my daily paper Politiken, they were paid to come and eat at Neolokal and didn't give an honest review. The visit to Neolokal was certainly not worth the for Turkey outstanding high price. We got very good food elsewhere in Turkey for a fragment of that price, maybe all of our main dishes in total got to the same amount. Very...