Yakut Fish &Meat Restaurant — Restaurant in Fatih

Summary:

Tried to scam us by substituting the cheaper beef for mutton, did not serve us our pita bread that comes with the dish until we requested for it, and falsely labelled their spaghetti as tagliatelle. Would avoid this restaurant. That being said, credits to the taste of the food which was decent, staff were friendly until the incidents happened.

More details below:

Staff were nice when they welcomed us into the store, where we expressed that we were slightly in a hurry. However, we were explicit in ordering dishes, including a local lamb casserole and a tagliatelle (a type of flat pasta), by pointing on the pictures on the menu page with the dish (they have separate pages for mutton, beef and chicken etc). When we ate the lamb casserole, we realised that the meat was in fact beef (context is that lamb is 1.5x more expensive than beef in Turkey), when diced the two meats look similar, but the taste and textures are distinctly different as we have been travelling in Turkey for about 10 days prior to visiting Yakut Restaurant, so we knew what lamb casserole should taste like.

We called the waiters immediately who were hesitant to attend to us which did not help their case. The staff did not even bother checking the dish when we raised up the issue that this was beef and not lamb which got our alarm bells ringing. They put the blame on the chef who "put the wrong meat" and offered to change our dish but we needed to head off hence we ate the beef casserole as it is. Later on the staff gave us a 40 lira discount on the dish and charged us 255 lira, which firstly did not account for the difference in price of lamb and beef casseroles, and secondly was poor practice when you serve a wrong dish.

In Turkey, every meal was served with complimentary bread (100% of our meals), and specifically for our TWO casseroles, pita bread is served WITH the dish. However, the staff did not bring us any until almost the end of the meal, where we had to REQUEST for the pita bread after realising the issue. Poor service in this aspect.

Lastly, we ordered a "TAGLIATELLE fungi" which is a flat pasta with mushrooms, noting that there are "spaghetti bolognese" and other SPAGHETTI dishes listed on the same page of the menu. However, we were served SPAGHETTI fungi, which is a cheaper storebought pasta instead of tagliatelle. I'm no pasta expert, but this is outright falsifying items on the menu and extremely disappointing for such a highly rated restaurant.

The only good thing we observed, was that the staff kept their cool while dealing with the incident (of their own doing) and the matter was resolved without further conflict. Do patron the restaurant at your own risk, especially if you are...

The food is the most expensive place we dined at for the week, yet its quality was one of the worst. In addition to that, 5 people of our party got food poisoning from it, and 2 of us have been locked in our hotel room for the last 2 days with really bad bowel movements that make it impossible to go anywhere because you need to be near a toilet at all times. DO NOT EAT HERE.

The food also took 1 hour and 45 minutes to come out, after we ordered it. Unbelievably slow, but it was obvious that they were trying to get us to keep buying more wine and alcohol while we waited. We know this because an hour and half after our order, the waiter came over to confirm what everyone ordered because he had gotten the order wrong. So they were just letting us sit there with no food cooking in the kitchen, before that.

The man who was trying to welcome people into the restaurant was rude after the first day that we didn’t come in, and continued to be extremely pushy for all the days after that. (Should have been a red flag to not go into the restaurant but the look of the restaurant is quite nice).

Overall I cannot recommend it enough for people to AVOID this restaurant. I have lost 2 days of my vacation because of it, locked in a hotel room. 5/8 of our party had bowel issues the following day. Very annoyed with the service and quality of the restaurant for how the price was.

This restaurant has 800+ reviews for a 4.8 star rating, which I can promise you is from fake reviews. Do not trust the reviews, this is some sort of scam that other restaurants in the area are also running. They have manipulated the google reviews. You would be hard pressed to find ANY restaurant with 800+ reviews that is a 4.8 star in the world, these reviews are so obviously...

SCAM ALERT

I am really sorry to state this here but definitely have to do. We had a very bad experience here. This was our first place for food as soon as we landed Istanbul. They were welcoming initially and We were provided with standard menu, we had ordered few things as take away. But as soon as they made a final bill the price were different to that we ordered. My friend and I was sure regarding the initial price that was on the menu that they showed and were prepared to give the same amount but everything was different as soon as the bill was prepared. We questioned them regarding the difference, the guy became a different person CLOSED THE DOOR AND WAS RUDE TO US. To prove themselves they brought another menu card which had white sticker bits and handwritten price.

We had no options rather paying the asked amount. We felt very bad and scammed. Food was not bad but the service and the people there were horrible.

We took pictures of all the menu with prices whenever we ordered again. I hope nobody experience this...