ESRA MUSLU’S SWISS CHARD GÖZLEME

‘Back home, we eat completely different food. We don’t often go out to eat kebabs,’ says chef Esra Muslu, as she contemplates the grill dishes and street foods which dominate British understanding of Turkish cuisine. ‘It depends on the person and how you grew up, but my family food was based on vegetables and fish, with a little meat.’

It’s such ‘seasonal, home-style’ Turkish cooking which the 43-year-old explores at her new London restaurant, Zahter – or a small slice of it, at least. As Esra acknowledges, as you travel from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean or out to Turkey’s eastern border, in a country simultaneously shaped by centuries of Armenian, Jewish, Persian and Arabic influence, the regional and cultural differences in Turkish cooking are such that it is a never-ending journey of discovery. That adventure is what keeps Esra, who opened several restaurants in her native Istanbul before moving to London, so