Çiy in the Cool Shade of Ephesus
It turns out my first encounter with Çiy was in July 2021. We had spent a night among the vineyards of Yedi Bilgeler in Selçuk and had dinner at Çiy, Damla Uğurtaş’s restaurant within the estate.
I remember liking the meal overall, but no particular dish really stayed with me. Truth be told, what I remember more vividly than what we ate is my son’s aching ear, and leaving the table halfway through dinner to find a pharmacy. The food, apparently, got lost somewhere in all that. I do remember the pappardelle with slow-cooked beef neck, though. Now that was good. And I remember objecting to the excessively chilled red wine, repeatedly trying to wipe dry a glass sweating as profusely as a pint of beer.
Five years have passed.
We are on our way to Ali Nesin’s Mathematics Village in Şirince, about to let our son go off on his own for the first time. And here we are at Çiy again. Mother, father and son. For all three of us, this is an important stop along the road, something to do with growing up, and with raising someone who is growing away from you.
We talk.
We are at Çiy’s new home, back in Selçuk where its story began, in the shadow of Ephesus and beside the Church of St. John: Çiy Teras Bar & Restaurant. This time there are matters far deeper than an aching ear at our table. Our son is about to be on his own. For the first time.
Yaprak Sarma (Stuffed Vine Leaves) with Cardamom-Scented Sour-Cherry Sauce
Hummus with Sucuk
To my rescue comes the yaprak sarma (stuffed vine leaves) with cardamom-scented sour-cherry sauce. The yoghurt alongside it, lifted by lemon zest, is exquisite, and so is the balance they achieve together. Could this possibly be the best sarma I have ever eaten?
“ You won’t forget to call us, will you?”
The sheer pointlessness of my question becomes apparent with the arrival of the hummus with sucuk. If he doesn’t need to call, let him not call. Both the hummus and the sucuk are excellent on their own, but more importantly, together they make sense. Two dishes, two hits.
Mücver (Courgette Fritter) with Tahini Yoghurt
Çıtır Kabak (Crispy Zucchini)
Then comes the mücver (courgette fritter), accompanied on its journey by tahini yoghurt. Don’t be fooled by its appearance: it is seriously delicious.
Even if he doesn’t call, he loves us. We will always be somewhere in his heart. Like tahini yoghurt: deep, savory, something of which just a little can be enough. Almost a demonstration of how depth, knowledge, technique and experience, in other words, quality, can leave quantity behind.
Not everything is perfect, of course.
Sometimes he suddenly stops, digs his heels in at the most unexpected moment and snaps at us. That didn’t go well. But it will pass in a minute.
Like the crispy zucchini.
I am stubborn about this one too. I wrote about it recently; I said it then, and perhaps complained about it a little as well. My reference point for crispy zucchini is a good tempura: the one at Koço in Moda. If you are going to bring carob molasses into the equation, as Çiy does here, then perhaps we should introduce you to aubergine instead: berenjenas con miel de caña, the Andalusian dish of fried aubergine with cane honey. In Barcelona, one of the best versions can be found at Bar Cañete, founded by a family from Seville.
Grilled Halloumi with Honey and Olive Salad
Another plate arrives, one that evokes for me the intertwined Arab and Jewish culinary cultures of the Mediterranean: grilled halloumi with honey and olive salad.
Our argument, meanwhile, is slowly getting somewhere.
We will live and see. And learn.
Talking is useful, but eventually you have to do it. Until you experience something yourself, ideas merely collide and bounce back; they neither merge nor become a synthesis.
We will live and learn. Mistakes included. And great joys too.
Schnitzel
Liver with Butter and Caramelised Onions
Then come the mains: The schnitzel tastes as though it has come out of a restaurant devoted entirely to schnitzel—impressive. The liver with butter and caramelised onions, perhaps because of the pace of service or perhaps simply because of my own perception, has cooled a little, allowing a certain bitterness to emerge. Fair enough. Not everything has to be perfect.
Because now we come to the real masterpiece: We close the evening—and our agenda—with a magnificent lemony seafood pasta.
This time, I leave the table far more impressed. In fact, I don’t really want to leave.
A great deal has happened in five years. The difference is too substantial to be explained simply by my memory, or by the exhausting distractions surrounding our visit back then. Both Çiy and Damla Uğurtaş have travelled a considerable distance.
Lemony Seafood Pasta
From that 2021 dinner, what remained in my mind was essentially one pasta dish. At the new Çiy, what I encounter across one plate after another is something different: a chef working with the same ingredients, the same geography and the same culinary curiosity, but now with a much clearer sense of what she wants to say.
There is a distance between cooking good food and developing a culinary language that is unmistakably your own. The journey Damla Uğurtaş has made with Çiy over these years is, I think, largely about crossing that distance.
Damla’s story is not a conventional chef biography. She comes from an İzmir family with Cretan roots and studied English Language and Literature at Hacettepe University. After attending the Culinary Arts Academy in Istanbul, she worked with Italian chef Giovanni Terracciano. One of the roots of the fresh-pasta technique that remains important in her cooking today lies there.
In 2013, she joined the kitchen at Yedi Bilgeler. She stepped away after the birth of her daughter Toprak in 2016, and when she returned in 2018, Çiy was born.
The first Çiy was a vineyard restaurant. Its menu changed every six to eight weeks, following a simple principle: whatever is at the market. Local produce, fruit used for acidity as much as sweetness, fresh pasta, fish, offal, pickles, and fermentation were already part of Damla’s culinary vocabulary.
Looking at the photographs I took in 2021, I can see the words of today’s Çiy already sitting there on those plates. But having the words is not the same thing as knowing how to write a good sentence.
At the end of 2021, Damla left Yedi Bilgeler—and took Çiy with her. At the end of 2022, she opened Çiy Restaurant & Konukevi in the village of Caferli near Kuşadası. What had been a restaurant within a vineyard became an independent village restaurant with its own vegetable garden and guesthouse.
Damla’s cooking gradually found a voice of its own. Cretan and Aegean memories, Mediterranean produce, Italian pasta technique, offal, raw fish, fermentation and fruit began to form a more coherent whole.
The Caferli chapter came to an end in 2025.
Çiy did not. Damla moved the restaurant back to Selçuk. And what a good decision that was.
The struggle, it seems, has found its way onto the plate—and turned into flavour.
