Cuma

Season first, then the plate

The market decides before the menu does at Cuma, on Çukurcuma Caddesi in Beyoğlu, where the card keeps changing so that what is good that week has room to set the terms. The house is built around seasonal Turkish ingredients, and a single day can run from soft cheese with honey to sea bass ceviche, from mashed fava beans with smoked cauliflower to Georgian dumplings.

There is no long public account of the kitchen hierarchy here, so the work has to be read in the plates and in the daily changes. The through line is practical: ingredients first, technique in service, references kept legible without being fixed in place. Cuma holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand for that, and the Çukurcuma address suits it, an antique-shop street where the pace is slower than the rest of the district.

A daily menu with several centres

Cuma’s kitchen runs à la carte and small plates, with a structure loose enough to hold breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner without becoming casual in its method. The Turkish breakfast can arrive as a meze-like spread, with soft cheese covered in honey and the familiar abundance of the morning table. Later in the day, the same room shifts toward tapas-style plates, pizzettas, pasta, pulled lamb, vegan curry with rice, and vegetable dishes shaped by what is good in the market.

The house’s signatures show the range of the program. Sea bass ceviche brings clean acidity into a Mediterranean frame. Georgian dumplings pull the menu eastward without leaving the neighborhood table. Fava beans with smoked cauliflower, mixed grain salad, green curry vegetables, and porcini dumplings give the vegetarian side of the kitchen actual structure, not an afterthought. Summer eggplants and tomatoes have their place, often with garlic yogurt, while thin pizzettas carry aubergine and fresh tomato in a sharper, quicker form. Tagliatelle with shrimps, grilled peach, and poached egg with halloumi, yogurt and crunchy bread fill out the mains. Desserts stay in the same register: berry pavlova, baklava, carrot cake with walnuts, and an apple-strawberry ice tea made with real fruit and mint. Cuma also holds a curated wine program and cocktails, a shift made possible after the restaurant obtained a liquor license around 2015.

The room off Çukurcuma Caddesi

The room reads more like a lived-in house than a polished dining room. Armchairs, books, children’s toys, and a high chair sit inside the modern, cozy decor; the garden terrace and front terrace take the work outside when the weather allows. Çukurcuma Caddesi brings its own texture, with antique shops close by and the quieter pace of Beyoğlu away from the city’s harder traffic. The noise stays conversational. The light is soft.

Service here is upscale casual, and the format lets a table build its own rhythm: a Turkish breakfast, a long lunch, a set of small plates, a dinner with wine. Sea bass ceviche holds the place together at Cuma.