Mavi Bufe — Restaurant in Fatih

📖 The menu – extremely confusing and hard to read. The small prices (100–150₺) for sides and desserts are printed big and eye-catching, while the actual prices for main dishes (1,000–1,600₺) are hidden in small print. Unless you know exactly where to look, you’ll think a normal meal is affordable, but the final bill easily reaches several thousand lira.

🥙 Portions – very large, but misleading. The menu makes it look like “100 g” is a tiny portion, so you’re tempted to order more. In reality, even the smallest portion is huge. The waiter keeps pushing you to order larger sizes, which no one can realistically finish. The result: wasted food and an inflated bill.

🍖 Food – decent, but nothing special. The döner meat was seasoned well, but it wasn’t served hot, just lukewarm. The taste was okay, but absolutely not worth the outrageous prices. At the end, you realize you’ve paid fine-dining, Michelin-star money… for a shawarma.

👨‍🍳 Service – mediocre. The staff seemed rushed and more focused on upselling bigger portions than on explaining the menu or making the experience enjoyable.

🏠 Atmosphere – nothing remarkable, just an ordinary place to sit and eat.

💸 The bill – for a few dishes, some simple drinks and a salad, the total was over 5,200₺, with a 10% “service charge” added automatically.

⚠️ Conclusion – Yes, the food was edible and not bad, but nothing justifies these crazy prices. The menu is deliberately misleading, and the whole experience feels like a trap for tourists. If you want a good döner in Istanbul, you can easily find excellent alternatives for a fraction of the price.

Not...

If I can give 0 star, I would love to! I have never had such an expensive and dry breakfast in my life!!! We just ordered two small portions of kebab, a soup, and three cups of juices. It cost us 2008 lira?! (Especially mango juice alone cost 675)!!! This is absolutely excessive!

I was so confused how is the price so different to what I saw on the menu, then I realized all the visible prices on the menu are for small size drink, and they cheekily directed us to order a bigger size that we don’t even know the price of. And they gave us a plate of sauce, they made it seem like it’s free but it was not! They should have definitely informed us about it. I am speechless about how they doing business in such a dirty way!

And yes, maybe we should have read the menu even more carefully. And maybe we should have asked about all the prices before we eat, so we didn’t get scam like this. But we also just wanted to believe they are good and trustworthy people, we don’t want to doubt and judge people straight away. I guess I AM WRONG!

They definitely think foreigners are such easy target to scam. This restaurant has ruined our good impression of Turkey, Turkish people. It is extremely unacceptable and I actually think the city should do something about stores and owners like this if they want tourism to be beneficial in a long term.

Sincerely hope that everyone will not be ripped off by them!!! Just go...

The menu is full of traps, we ordered small portions of mixed meat 100 grams in our wrap but was charged double. Nowhere does it say on the menu that for a mixed option (which would be 100 grams in total 50-50) you would be charged for the meats separately, since it was recommended by the guy serving us, he should’ve warned us about it, but he didn’t. We also clearly said that we are ordering 100 grams which is a small portion when ordering. They also tried to charge us for 4 lentil soups when we only had 2. If you do decide to eat here make sure you are aware of their carefully crafted menu to deceive you and look at the bill before paying it. Also the service fee was around 15-20% which is ridiculous for a bufe on the street. While eating the guys were keep touching our table as well, taking our salt away for another table which was very annoying. When we argued the bill they became loud and didn’t want to hear anything we said, kept saying the same thing so we decided to pay to avoid causing a scene and ruin our day. Ended up leaving with 550 liras less in our pocket which is quite a joke, since we spent much less in other places for much better quality and service. Will never return here. And the food wasn’t even great for all...