Urla is Türkiye’s growing gastronomic hub. The production of high-quality vegetables, fruits, aromatic herbs, and meat in Urla ensures that chefs who have opened restaurant after restaurant in the region have access to the freshest ingredients. Skilled chefs know how to process these valuable gifts to create more delicious dishes for their customers and support the consumption of local ingredients. Due to all these developments in just a few years, Urla has caught the attention of Michelin inspectors. The growing global trend for local ingredients and flavors in recent years has been the catalyst for a more sustainable approach within the gastronomy which aims to reduce the carbon footprint of logistics. So, The Green Star is created to support and make visible this new understanding that puts gastronomic richness, diversity, and localness against low-quality standardization and to promote a zero-waste, sustainable, and a fair version against an environmentally insensitive consumption culture. And now, The Green Stars shines in the skies of Urla with Hiç, Vino Locale, and Od Urla.
Hiç Restaurant
Also listed on the Bib Gourmand, Hiç is far beyond a restaurant. It has a 2,400-acre forest with trees such as laurel, wild gum trees, pistachio, and 30 different wild species, including 1,400 acres of olive groves. Hiç uses the olives, olive oil, laurel, aromatic herbs, and seeds from this forest in its kitchen. The Hiç Forest is the most extensive sustainable agricultural land in Urla and the only edible-certified organic forest in Türkiye. Hiç Restaurant is also a direct result of a series of agricultural activities. In 2010, Duygu Özerson Elakdar started processing olives. Then she established an olive oil production brand and founded Hiç Olive Oil in 2014. After gaining experience in these farming activities and learning the intricacies of olive oil, she opened the restaurant in 2018.
However, the “ecosystem” of Hiç extends beyond this. There are various other activities: Hiç Ceramics Workshop, crafting the restaurant’s ceramics (and much more!); the Urla Cooking Class Workshops, offering cooking lessons for those interested in local ingredients and quality flavors; and Olive Oil Tasting Workshops, organized by Duygu Özerson Elakdar for those who want to learn the details about olive oil. As you can see, it is a holistic system that exists together with the forest, the olive groves, the endemic herbs, and olive oil as the cornerstone of the region for thousands of years, along with the other agricultural products. Behind Hiç’s creative and distinctive dishes, there is Duygu Özerson Elakdar’s and her team’s deep understanding of the gastronomic gifts of Urla. The restaurant repurposes even the wooden parts of the scaffolding used during the construction of restaurant as serving utensils today.
Here, every aspect supports sustainability and local sourcing, not just the ingredients of the plates but everything around them. There is no waste here. This sincere effort is also reflected in the details of the dishes. For example, as Urla is a region renowned for its vineyards and wine production, Hiç portrays the region’s essence in a sorbet prepared with a touch of wine. The sorbet includes the grape and wine from the region, complemented by a delightful simmered sauce made from the pine cones of the Hiç Forest. The combination of wine and pine flavors is simply “extraordinary” in the palate. Many hidden treasures like this are waiting to be discovered in the menu of the Hiç whose team is able to capture the region’s aroma, texture, and taste on a single plate.
Vino Locale
Inspired by the vineyard road in Urla, Vino Locale is one of the first fine dining spots in the region making the vineyard road more recognizable. Seray and Ozan Kumbasar are the restaurant’s creators, and they have both One Michelin Star and a Green Star. They left their white-collar jobs to open Vino Locale, following their dreams and even choosing the name with a dedication to “local wine.” Seray Kumbasar, who won The Best Sommelier Award in 2023, has meticulously created a large cellar and a rich wine list dominated by regional wines that complement and enhance her husband Ozan Kumbasar’s creative dishes. In this way, the couple allows guests to taste what Urla offers both on the plate and in the glass.
At the beginning of the couple’s exciting journey, Urla was still an unknown region far from the eyes, and they founded Vino Locale with a passion for nature and abundance of Urla. Adopting zero-waste and sustainability as their guiding principles, they change the menu almost every month, using local and seasonal ingredients. This means a continuous cycle of recipe creation for Ozan Kumbasar, ongoing adaptation to new recipes for the kitchen and service team, and constant creation of new wine pairings for Seray Kumbasar. In other words, it is a ceaseless investment of energy and time. However, continually pursuing the new and the different, not hesitating experimenting, and spending energy bring success. For example, while Chef Ozan Kumbasar tries to process local ingredients with various techniques, he interprets the fried artichoke -a symbol of Roman cuisine- with Urla’s sakız artichoke and by this innovation, he even raises the level of a dish that already has a place in world gastronomy thanks to the less fibrous and more delicate nature of this local artichoke variety.
At a restaurant where the menu changes with the seasons, lemon parfait is the only dish that never changes. The profit of this dessert is used for the good of Koruncuk Foundation, a foundation for helping children. Through this gesture, Seray and Ozan Kumbasar show that running a fair and sustainable restaurant extends beyond using local ingredients or cooking without waste. The relationship with the local community is also significant in a field like gastronomy, which intersects with people. In this sense, offering students from the cookery department of Urla Hakan Çeken High School the opportunity to work together in the restaurant exemplifies the intertwining of food with people, the region, producers, and consumers.
Od Urla
Osman Sezener, the owner and chef of Od Urla, is also aware of how food is intertwined with the region and the local community. As mentioned in the previous chef portrait, he is a chef who grew up in this region, spent years in the family-run business, knows the geography and what it offers as ingredients very well. Following his culinary training, Sezener deepened his connection with Urla in the years he spent setting up his restaurant and teaching gastronomy, becoming perhaps the most prominent figure in Urla in establishing the farm-to-table movement.Now, Sezener’s role extends beyond that of an ordinary chef: He is deeply engaged in every aspect of the food chain, sourcing his produce and running his restaurant on sustainably farmed land. This is a significant responsibility and a vast “playground” for a chef. When the chef uses new aromatic herbs of his production in every menu, includes his new “discoveries” from local shrimps to octopus in his restaurant, and includes his own wine in the wine list, these all reflect the result of years of research and labor. Similarly, Od Urla’s One Michelin Star and Green Star are the result of their efforts and commitment.
This is the time which we realize that gastronomy can only elevate with a holistic view, food culture is deeply interconnected with geography and the local community, and as the most influential names in today’s culinary landscape, chefs’ themselves are now aware of that they have to bear responsibility. That’s the common point of these chefs’ too: Each one of these Green Starred restaurants meet on a common ground of awareness and responsibility. Their menus change seasonally, guided by the principles of sustainability, zero-waste cuisine, low carbon-footprint, and localism. Except for a few ingredients (such as cocoa, vanilla, and coffee which are essential but not locally grown in Türkiye), they use local ingredients and resources, and design their menus accordingly. Sometimes, you may not be able to eat your favorite dish again or find the one that surprised you, but it means you can always begin a new journey by searching for new flavors, isn’t it?
Header : Od Urla // Copyright: Buket Yaşar/Od Urla
