A Far Easterner with three tables in Tarlabaşı

As a passionate culinary artist, Burcu brings light to the dark streets of Tarlabaşı with her mastery in Far Eastern cuisine, creating extraordinary delicacies in the place where she feels most at home — her kitchen.

We listen to the story behind a bite served on a long-handled wooden spoon: "What we have here is a raw meatball. Instead of using tomato paste, we incorporate gochujang and gochugaru from Korea. Rather than putting the meat inside, we've placed it on top. The wagyu beef, which we smoked in that stone oven you see right behind me, has been thinly sliced and added to the raw meatball." Next, we are presented with marrow, topped with Chinese Jiaozi — one of the best dumplings I've ever had. There's also a syringe attached to the bottom of the dumpling. Burcu Önal explains: "This is my signature dish. It's actually the very first dish I ever made, and it holds a lot of personal significance. The woman who raised me, though not my biological mother, is Chinese. As a child, the first dish she taught me was this dumpling. The syringe contains broth from a neck meat soup, slow-cooked in a stone oven. You should inject the broth into the dumpling before eating it, and then scrape out the marrow."

No, I'm not at a high-end restaurant in the Far East. I'm at the restaurant that's left the deepest impression on me lately: Sini. Jiaozi is their signature dish, offered in various versions. Another standout dish is their ramen, where they prepare the broth in a stone oven and make the noodles by hand. On the bottom of a glass plate, resting above a tiny aquarium, is futomaki — large maki sushi made with a nine-kilogram brushtooth lizardfish that arrived that very day. The futomaki is topped with tarama, wasabi and edamame sauces. There's so much to...