Day by day, there’s a hopefor those looking for quality and tasty food places in Anatolian side. There have been changes in this quiet part of the city.More and more new places have been emerging, and bringing influence to this part. One of them is Rotisserie Noir.
I’ve been living in Anatolian side for nearly 22 years. Unfortunately, the places in Anatolian side have showed no progress in terms of quality of taste.So, this beautiful part of İstanbul has stayed in the background compared to the glamour and customer potential of İstanbul. As most of the touristic attractions are on European side, we ‘ve waited for years for good restaurants to emerge in Anatolian side. Lately, new places have been renewing the atmosphere of this part of İstanbul as well. I’m not only talking about the liveliness of the decoration, but also the emergence of new tastes. One of these places is Rotisserie Noir. What makes this place different than others? Its black walls? Meat cooked on volcano rocks? The diverse menu that resembles no one other?My answer to these questions is both yes and no! The reason why I hold this place in high esteem is because its “different”. In any way. With its decoration, style, understanding of taste and even the owner of the place it is different.
The manager of the place, Mr.Oguz is also on of the shareholders of Gile, theavant-garde food paradise of the leading innovative chefs Cihan Kıpçak and Üryan Doğmuş in Akaratler. I think I can make a conviction for these two places with different concepts: For both places, food is made and served with love.
The menu at Rotisserie Noir is not a confusing one, yet one that is open to innovations. Before serving our starters, they bring bread and honey, cinnamon and melted goat cheese inside. Goat cheese has an excellent taste. The familiar magic of honey and cinnamon and the savoury nature of goat cheese create a pleasant harmony. One of my biggest fears here is that what if they ruin his beauty with cold, tasteless bread… But that’s not the case! The yeasty bred served is so good that you wish you could go on eating forever. It’s served toasted and warm. We are all appalled before we start eating. I see that the silence of the table approves what I think. The butter is brought on table after a special fix of the Chef (melted and refrozen). It’s smoked and salty. It goes so well with the bread. It prepares us for the next dishes.
My recommendation as a starter is Bruschetta with goat cheese.
We are so enchanted with the bread and goat cheese that, I decide to try bruchetta with goat cheese on the menu. This yeasty bread whose recipe is kept as a secret by the waiters is made exclusively at a bakery in Göztepe and served with the harmony of walnut, garlic, rocket and tomato instead of honey, cinnamon and cheese this time. The olive oil poured over the top is gorgeous. Here, it is a simple masterpiece for you.
As a warm starter, we order beef with green apple wrapped in baklava filo. I remember now that I’ve tried a similar dish at Gile. When I share this with OğuzBey, he says: “It’s true that we influence each other, but we have different concepts and therefore refuse to be compared”. There was this dominant taste of humus and cumin of küşneme wrapped in baklava filo at Gile Restaurant Akaretler. What we eat here is apple (due to seasonal reasons, as normally it is made with quince) in beef, all wrapped in baklava filo. On my first bite, I agree with OğuzBey. Yes, these are different tastes under the same guise. You know how they say, “if you want to test the freshness and beauty of baklava, all you need to do is to put your fork through it”, and when I do this, I hear that beautiful crunchy noise. Although the combination of tahini and baklava filo is the same, the different taste apple brings makes me feel I’m eating something completely different. If it didn’t have meat in it, I might even think that it was a fried apple pie. This “different” warm starter stole my heart. The most important thing is that, I appreciate this place for its success and courage in creating new tastes. No matter what they say, putting apple and humus together and serving it to us, to a traditional food culture, is nothing but braveness.
French style chopped steak
I’ve never liked steak fillet. Steak fillet is always safe, but at the same time the most boring and bland in taste for me. My preference here is chopped steak instead of a classic steak fillet dish. They use a French cooking style that also gives the name of the place, Rotisserie Noir. It’s just like our spit-roast, but it’s not on coal. Instead, it’s cooked evenly on volcanic rocks, hanged from the top and not touching the fire. To make it tasty and juicy, the chopped steaks are not fried one by one, but two pieces at the same time. In this way, the outside is sealed beautifully and the inside stays juicy and slightly bloody. When I’m just about to ask how they came up with this method, I’m told that their chef in the kitchen is a French chef called Richard Madzar. So now I know how they can manage the application of this method. 
I have a couple of things to say for the additional vegetables we ordered next to the dish. First of all, the spinach they serve at most of the places where they focus on steaks is quite heavy with cream, salty and uncooked. The cream of the spinach at Rotisserie Noir is perfect in that sense. Besides, they didn’t blend the spinach in too much salt and therefore, it’s not ruined. Most of all, they cooked it well and didn’t filled it up with onion. As a result, I really like this side dish. However, I can’t say the samefor the fried potatoes in truffle oil. It was fried too much and therefore it was very dry.
As a finale, we’re having pop candy glazed chocolate truffle cake. At first we thought it might be a bit heavy, but we find out that’s not the case. On the contrary, the chocolate pudding melts in your mouth. Also, the thought of pop candy is quite a good idea: the experience of Rotisserie Noir pops in my mouth like firework and we have a really good food experience here.
I wish that this place transformed itself into an even better place with additional wines in their drinks list. Anatolian side is one step closer to better days of food.
Evaluation: 10/10
