Söğüşçüm, Ilıca: Offal Done Properly
Çeşme, especially in summer, is one of those places where the relationship between good food and high prices seems increasingly tenuous. Söğüşçüm, in Ilıca, comes from somewhere else entirely. This is a family-run restaurant, owned and operated by Füsun and Ersin İnceoğlu, and at its heart are neither fashionable concepts nor elaborate plates, but something increasingly difficult to find in Turkey: genuinely good offal.
Ersin İnceoğlu has been making söğüş for more than forty years, and the backbone of this family business remains İzmir’s traditional söğüş culture. Lamb tongue, cheek and brain; kokoreç, liver, sweetbreads, boğazlık… The menu reads almost like a small anatomy of offal.
Yet Söğüşçüm is no longer simply a traditional söğüş shop. From tongue burgers and brain söğüş to sweetbreads cooked on cast iron and large sharing plates, it brings traditional ingredients into the setting of a contemporary restaurant. Crucially, it does so without trying to disguise the offal or turn it into something else. The ingredient remains at the centre of the plate.
This evolution has also been recognised by Gault&Millau. Söğüşçüm appeared as a Gourmand Table Traditional in 2024, a Gourmand Table Street Food in 2025 and in the Original Tables selection in 2026. But the plaques on the wall matter less than what arrives at the table. In a place like this, the real question is a simple one: how good is the offal?
We tried a substantial part of the menu.
Kelle Çorba (Lamb Head Soup)
Akıllı Tabak (Brain with Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
Kelle Çorba (Lamb Head Soup)
The weakest dish of the meal.
It is good that the soup is made without flour or roux. But the broth lacks the deep, concentrated flavour of the head itself. My impression is that the base relies more heavily on bone broth than on the cooking liquor from the head. The meat in the bowl is indeed head meat, but it has not given enough of its flavour back to the broth to define the soup.
It also lacks the gelatinous, collagen-rich texture I look for in a good kelle paça, that slight stickiness on the lips and the depth it brings. This is not a bad soup. It simply sits well below the level of what follows.
Akıllı Tabak (Brain with Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
Listed on the menu as Akıllı Tabak, literally the “Smart Plate”, this is essentially beyin söğüş: 250 grams of lamb or beef brain served with cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil and black pepper.
I had not eaten brain this good in a very long time.
Brain is a difficult ingredient. It has to be extremely fresh and cooked with absolute precision. A little too long and the texture is gone; too little and it loses its delicacy.
Here it was exactly as it should be: soft and creamy, yet still holding its shape. The slices remained intact rather than collapsing on the plate. With very good olive oil and just a little lemon, it needed almost nothing else. Tomato was there as an accompaniment, but the brain was unquestionably the point of the dish.
A plate good enough to make even my mother jealous. And that is not something I say lightly.
Gurme Dürüm (Gourmet Söğüş Wrap)
Baget Kokoreç (Chopped Kokoreç Sandwich)
Gurme Dürüm (Gourmet Söğüş Wrap)
The söğüş dürüm is unquestionably the centre of the menu. More than anything else, it explains why this place is, first and foremost, a söğüşçü.
Lamb tongue, cheek and brain come together not as a homogeneous mass of offal but as something deep and distinctly layered. The meaty texture of the tongue, the intensity of the cheek and the rich creaminess of the brain remain individually perceptible while working beautifully together. Tomato, parsley, onion, cumin and chilli support the offal without overwhelming it.
For my palate, it needed a little more salt. Apart from that small reservation, it was excellent. The portion is generous too: this is a properly filled dürüm, with no economising on the ingredients.
If you were to eat just one thing to understand what Söğüşçüm is about, the söğüş dürüm would be an excellent place to start.
But it was not the best thing on our table.
Baget Kokoreç (Chopped Kokoreç Sandwich)
This was the dish that impressed me most.
The first bite inevitably took me back to the old Beyoğlu Fish Market, to the days when Mercan was still really Mercan. But this is not simply a matter of nostalgia. Memories of food can easily make the past taste better than it actually was, and it is important not to confuse that with what is on the plate today.
This is doğrama kokoreç, chopped kokoreç, but it has not been minced so finely that its texture disappears. The relatively large pieces allow the fattiness of the lamb intestine, the distinctive flavour of the offal and its different textures to remain individually perceptible. The bread does what good bread should do here: it carries everything without getting in the way.
Once I put nostalgia aside, the conclusion was remarkably straightforward:
This is the most delicious kokoreç I have ever eaten.
Dökümde Boğazlık-Uykuluk (Cast-Iron Sweetbreads)
Dökümde Boğazlık-Uykuluk (Cast-Iron Sweetbreads)
I cannot quite say that these were the best sweetbreads I have ever eaten, but they were certainly among the best.
The cooking, in particular, was the work of someone who knows exactly what they are doing. Beautifully seared and caramelised in places on the outside, while remaining juicy and tender within. With sweetbreads, a few seconds too long can be enough to ruin the texture. The precision here was close to perfect.
I had two small reservations. The first was, again, salt. For my palate it needed a little more, which would also have helped bring the flavour of the sweetbreads further forward.
The second concerns the flavour of the sweetbread itself. That peculiar, distinctive taste that separates sweetbreads from every other kind of offal is certainly present, but I would have liked it to be stronger and more assertive.
Then another question arises: is it even possible to find those intensely flavoured sweetbreads of the past today? I am no longer sure. Perhaps, with the ingredients available now, this is not merely among the best. Perhaps this is as good as it gets.
Conclusion
Söğüşçüm succeeds not because it modernises offal, but because it knows how far not to modernise it. It does not hide what the ingredients are, erase their textures or sanitise their distinctive flavours into anonymous restaurant food.
And perhaps the fact that Söğüşçüm remains a family business matters here. Owned and operated by Füsun and Ersin İnceoğlu, there is a clear continuity between Ersin İnceoğlu’s more than forty years of experience with söğüş and what the restaurant has become today. The place has evolved, the menu has expanded and the presentation has changed, but the basic craft has not been abandoned in the process.
The Kelle Çorba falls below the overall standard, and a little more courage with salt would improve a couple of the dishes. Neither changes the larger picture.
The Akıllı Tabak (Brain with Extra Virgin Olive Oil) is exceptional, the Gurme Dürüm (Gourmet Söğüş Wrap) deep, layered and generous, and the Dökümde Boğazlık-Uykuluk (Cast-Iron Sweetbreads) is cooked with remarkable skill.
The Baget Kokoreç (Chopped Kokoreç Sandwich) is another matter altogether.
Sometimes a dish tastes better because it reminds us of something we ate many years ago. Here, the opposite happened. The kokoreç took me back to the Beyoğlu Fish Market, to the days when Mercan was still Mercan, and then surpassed the memory.
The most delicious kokoreç I have ever eaten.
