Tower of London
Yotam Ottolenghi has been my inspiration since the day I discovered him. I could safely say that he is one of my cooking gurus. Visiting one of his restaurants in London, as you can imagine, has been one of the highlights for me. Well, the other highlights were catching up with friends like Alec and Michael as well as JCC, seeing my favourite painting in real; The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck at The National Gallery.
Back to the subject… Ottolenghi Islington was the one we had the pleasure of trying. It caters for 50 people and some of the tables are communal. We booked a table one month in advance because we knew it would be difficult to get a table. This place is so popular with a capital P as you can imagine although they don’t take bookings for breakfast or lunch. So, booking for dinner is essential Peoples.
Food was exceptional but their wine list absolutely, totally blew us away. I have had the most interesting orange wine of my life. They are the big thing at the moment but getting a good orange wine is still a challenge. Well, in Australia anyway.
Here’s what we had:
Roasted aubergine with sorrel yoghurt, turmeric pickled radish, spring onion and almonds £9.00
Poached peaches, mixed bitter leaves, spicy pecan nuts, Roquefort and orange blossom dressing £9.50
Tempura sweet potato with peanut and coriander vadouvan and lime yoghurt £11.00
Pea and mint croquettes with yuzukosho mayonnaise £11.00
As for the wine… I started off with white from Loire, France. Touraine Le Tesniere is a bio-organically produced wine with flinty minerality (not my word, I stole it like an artist :)) combined with lemon, white fruits and a hint of dry honey as they say on the wine list. Then I moved on to an orange wine called A Demua from Italy. It was a stunningly unusual wine with dried apricot and almond. This one was quite complex as it is made with five local grape varieties (bio-organic, again). John on the other hand decided to stick to orange wine only and had Dinavolo and Vitovska. Both bio-organic, both from Italy.
When it was time to consider dessert we were both full yet didn’t want to miss the opportunity so we had desserts to go. John had a tart and I had one of those berry meringues I had my eyes on since I walked through that door (see photo below).
Before I forget, I also bought Yotam Ottolenghi’s latest cookbook Plenty More while I was there and like all my other Ottolenghi cookbooks, this one is signed too!
Ottolenghi Islington
287 Upper Street
London N1 2TZ
Tel: 020 7288 1454
Website: Ottolenghi
After Istanbul, our first stop was London. Just before we left Sydney, we asked Ajoy Joshi of Nilgiri’s and Tellicherry if he could recommend any Indian restaurants in London and he came back with three!
1. Quilon
2. Rasoi
3. Benaras
So, we started off with the first one on the list: Quilon. Quilon is actually a Michelin starred restaurant. It is located near Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Park and the whole place is decorated with artwork created for Quilon by an acclaimed artist; Paresh Maity.
Chef of Quilon, Sriram Aylur, is a good friend of Ajoy’s. So we mentioned that we were actually sent there by their chef’s good friend from Sydney to our waiter, Mr Aylur came out toward the end of our dinner to say hi which was very nice of him.
The menu at Quilon is based on South-west coastal region of India which sounds incredibly traditional however, everything is created with a contemporary flair while keeping the foundations intact. It may still sound like the whole focus would be on fish and seafood but If you let your waiter/waitress know, their chef is more than happy to put together a tasting menu which is designed to cater for your requirements. In our case, it was a vegetarian tasting menu.
Let’s begin with starters:
Mains:
Crispy okra thinly sliced okra, batter fried, tossed in onion, tomato and crushed pepper.
Asparagus and snow peas sauteed with mustard seeds, curry leaves, green chillies and grated coconut and potato and cauliflower with crushed cashew nuts potato and cauliflower florets cooked with onion, tomato, roasted spices and crushed cashew nuts.
Raw Jack Fruit Pulao (raw jack fruit, lentil dumplings with herbs and spices cooked with basmati rice served with fruit pachadi).
Bebinca. It is a traditional pudding from Goa. Not many Indian restaurants make it. In Sydney, there was only one place where they did bebinca which is shut down. This was a real treat for me because I LOVE my bebinca!
John’s dessert.
Masala chai
Quilon
41 Buckingham Gate
London, SW1E 6AF
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7821 1899
Website
Visiting Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul
During Gezi Park protests, a dear friend of mine sent me a photo of a police officer firing his gun at protesters, aiming right underneath the sign of Orhan Pamuk’s real life Museum of Innocence. It was a heartbreaking scene; my country, my police, my people and one of my favourite author’s museum sign.
When you see something like that, you immediately want to go back and do whatever you missed out during your last trip. However, Turkey is a bit like India —only in a smaller scale—that every region has its own cuisine, natural beauty, unique history and dialect. So, you can never see everything; there’s always something else, some place else to see and experience. I mean, I’m from Turkey but there is a lot even I haven’t seen yet. Well, The Museum of Innocence was one of those places.
Luckily, the situation calmed down back in Turkey and in the end, the very same dear friend of mine and her husband who took us there on a fine May afternoon in 2015. The plan for that night was to go to a wine house around Galata Tower (see photo below) to have dinner and catch up with friends. To be able to visit the museum on the very same day, we left early. So Artun drove us down to Kadıköy. After parking the car at a nearby parking building, we walked up to the pier to catch a ferry. The ferries are the normal form of transportation in Istanbul and that is the best way to travel from Asian side of Istanbul to European side —I believe Istanbul is the only city in the world that stretches across two continents. I guess we walked through a tunnel after that, caught a tiny carriage of a train which travels underground but still doesn’t qualify as tube or metro. Once we came out at the other side, we found ourselves on famous İstiklal Caddesi (İstiklal Avenue) in Beyoğlu.
Well, The Museum of Innocence may seem like just off İstiklal Caddesi, however, it takes some searching, climbing uphill and then go downhill and consulting local taxi drivers –twice actually but Alpay doesn’t want to talk about it—to find this incredibly out of sight place. But when maroon-painted, narrow townhouse pokes its head out and you have your experience only then you realize that it is well worth it.
Although, the novel came out in 2008, I read in 2011—and of course, I read it in Turkish. I now own a Turkish copy of the novel which I bought from Turkey during one of my visits, an autographed American fist edition, and the museum catalogue called The Innocence of Objects, too. In the last chapter of the novel, this is what it says:
“And let those who have read the book enjoy free admission to the museum when they visit for the first time. This is best accomplished by placing a ticket in every copy. The Museum of Innocence will have a special stamp, and when visitors present their copy of the book, the guard at the door will stamp this ticket before ushering them in.”
So, I brought my autographed American first edition all the way from Sydney to Istanbul to be stamped at the museum which can be seen in the photo below along with Füsun’s earrings and my bookmark.
The Museum of Innocence opened its doors in 2012 and its exhibition is divided and presented in display cabinets—some of them are box-sized cabinets, by the way— which contain objects collected by Orhan Pamuk and Kemal Basmaci. Each cabinet —there are 83 chapters in the novel so there are 83 display cabinets at the museum—corresponds to a chapter in the novel with the same number and title. The way it is designed makes you feel like you’re rereading the novel. This time through real life objects.
As you step inside the museum, you are greeted with a huge spiral pattern (see photo above) on the floor: Spiral of Time. Orhan Pamuk’s catalog of the Museum of Innocence, The Innocence of Objects explains the Spiral of Time as the time spiral that the novel develops; symbolizing Aristotelian ideas about time as a line that connects indivisible moments. Objects, like atoms, are carried through to the clocks exhibited in the central stairwell that comprise Box 54, “Time.” Each object in the museum, whether a salt-shaker or a cigarette butt, helps us remember the moments, converting time into space. The little booklet you explains it a bit further as: While the spiral represents time and the story itself, the golden dots represents moments in time, or the individual objects within the story. The ground floor of the museum also houses the biggest piece under its roof: Box no: 68 with 4213 cigarette buts (see photo below).
Photo credit: Nihan Vural (Istanbul Travelogue)
On the first and the second floor, the story continues with the objects and wall movie installations. Limon’s cage can also be seen on the first floor. If you need to refresh your memory, there are copies of the novel in different languages and a few places to sit while you’re reading, too.
On the top floor, the story still continues through box numbers 80-83 this is the room where Kemal Basmacı lived from 2000 to 2007 while the construction of the museum carried out. On one wall, Orhan Pamuk’s preliminary sketches for the boxes and his manuscript of The Museum of Innocence are on display.
Kemal Basmacı’s room (above).
In the basement, you can find museum shop and toilets. I love museum shops so I actually spend quite a bit of time in every museum I visit and pick up some really cool stuff. From this particular museum shop I bought a fridge magnet, a bookmark and Füsun’s earrings (see photo). Füsun’s earrings are designed and produced by Kıymet Daştan according to the description given by Orhan Pamuk himself. I haven’t worn mine yet but I’m looking forward to it. Next time, I’m thinking of getting some of the posters as well—not that I have enough wall space but I’ll work something out.
A snippet of a narrow road (above) on the way to the museum. I personally enjoyed reading some of the graffiti on the walls as a reminder of Gezi Park protests. If you decide to visit The Museum of Innocence, you might walk down this road yourself.
The Museum of Innocence can be found in this address below:
Çukurcuma Caddesi
Dalgıç Çıkmazı, 2
Beyoğlu, 34425
Turkey
Website
