Renowned chef innovates Turkish cuisine with tradition

"I believe the time has come to rethink the Anatolian kitchen," the chef had written in his manifesto.

But, these days, Mehmet Gürs, perhaps Turkey's most renowned chef, has been neither donning his apron nor slicing and dicing onions and tomatoes.

Instead, he has been busy traveling across Anatolia in search of the perfect ingredients to revive the region's traditional food culture and culinary techniques.

The 45-year-old celebrity chef began exploring Turkey six years ago gathering information on various indigents and cooking methods that he would later experiment in what he calls his laboratory, for the elaboration of his "New Anatolian Kitchen."

In his five-story Scandinavian-style office in Istanbul's main business district of Maslak, in which Gürs manages his "more than 15 restaurants", he explains his vision for his cuisine with enthusiasm.

"I don't care about ethnicity, I don't care about nationality, I don't care about religion," he says.
      
As he details in his manifesto, which can be found on his website, Gürs aims to dig in the region's past to unearth forgotten tastes, with an utter disregard for boundaries of any kind -- whether they be physical or psychological.

"The New Anatolian Kitchen has no boundaries; it is a way of perceiving food, it is a philosophy that can and should be interpreted in many ways," he writes.

A self-proclaimed "analytical engineer" when it comes to cooking, the head of one of the 100 best restaurants in the world, according to the Diners' Club 50 best restaurants Academy, has for instance devised an ice cream using ancient einkorn wheat.

"We wanted to do something radical," he says. "We marinated the wheat with dried apricots, a little bit...