I am beginning to wonder whether the notion of ‘discovering a new meyhane’ is not an oxymoron, and whether familiarity, not gastronomic innovation, is not really the whole point of the genre. It was a thought that came me after a late lunch at Güneşin Sofrasi Meyhanı in the Bahariye district of Kadıköy.  Everything on the way in screamed that this was an eccentric, comfortable place I would like and where I might come back again and again. I confess to very different thoughts on the way out.

The restaurant is the garden of the Nazim Hikmet Cultural Centre and down a calm and attractive side street around the corner from the busy hub of the Kadiköy bull statue. The centre itself, I am told, was once an Armenian school and the building like Cezayir in Beyoğlu (a former Italian working man’s club) projects a solid air of civic good. Upstairs is an elegant, high ceilinged dining room that was not open in summer.  We ate outside.

The building is leased by Turkish Communist Party who also use it  for weekly workshops and classes from pantomime to Spanish to Soviet cinema. I was pleased to see that one of the meeting rooms was named in memory of Mahmut Dikerdem, the charmingly grouchy diplomat who had been arrested for being a member of the Barış Derneğı and whom I had visited for tea after he had finally released from prison in 1985.  I have been to plenty of restaurants where there are cookbooks for sale, but this is the first one where the adjacent bookstore had Stalin’i Anlamak (Understanding Stalin) on the shelves –with a 20% discount to boot.

Alas, the food was anything but revolutionary, and the workers (i.e. waiters) seemed more defeated than united. Our handful of cold meze were all pretty standard and some of them hard to tell apart. The haricot bean pilaki did taste like haricot beans (kuru fasulye) and the ciroz (dried mackerel) had a smoky flavour but the one potentially unusual item – a baked half “bostan” aubergine gratinee (patlican kumpir) took ages to arrive and was far from pleasant –tough and chewy in parts, and unevenly cooked–  warm on top but still chilly in the middle.  

Waiter after waiter told us we couldn’t have tea (“if we served you, everyone might want some” – o zaman  herkes ister) but then suddenly one appeared with tea glasses at our table. He must have been a counter-revolutionary or a Trotskyite at least.

The afternoon wore on, the restaurant became increasingly crowded. The bill was not outrageous by Kadiköy standards but not a bargain either. Had we not arrived at an unusual hour we almost certainly would not have got a table without a reservation.

So here’s the puzzle.  Why would a restaurant where the food was just so-so, be so very popular? Years of living in England may have provided me with an answer.

I often think of pubs of as the cultural equivalent of meyhane and “pub grub” is almost by tradition mediocre. The lessons pub teach is that familiarity need not breed contempt (fazla samimiyet hürmetsizlik doğurur?). They are not places you travel hours to one never been to before, but somewhere near work or where you live, and where you might bump into friends.  If you like the atmosphere -- you stick to it. You might be able to find a decent snack at the bar, but only if you are lucky. And yet, for many the desire from something authentic is tempered by the need for adventure.

In England, increasing pubs recognise the old ways aren’t for everyone.  Many have come out of the closet to admit they are ‘gastropubs “– catering not just to those in search of another pint of beer but for interesting food. They are still pubs, and not intimidating in the way fine-dining with tablecloths and waiters in uniform might be-- even though in some cases they are as expensive.  In Turkey, too, there are establishments which have made a mental adjustment. They no longer serve meze but “new meze”. The principle is to build on traditions that may seem familiar but to create something different. In the old days no one really fussed over which raki to drink although the hope was that if you had not just Yeni Rakı but Tekirdağ, your head the next day might not feel like a wet football left to dry in the sun.  Now there is a bewildering choice of rakı. I suspect the cultural cues for this do not derive from meyhane traditions but restaurants that serve wine.

So I have learned to temper my criticism. Just as I accept that a tepid, greasy sausage is intrinsic to an authentic, pre-post modern pub, “patlican atom” the consistency of builders’ putty is part of a rich tradition of an unreconstructed meyhane. But as is the case with Stalin, I am not sure I really understand.