Hodan

Beans learned door by door

The plate stays quiet while Chef Çiğdem Seferoğlu works at Hodan in Istanbul, setting Turkish flavors against white cloth and minimal presentation. Her station is not built on spectacle. It is built on restraint, seasonal produce, and the decision to let familiar food arrive with a cleaner line.

Seferoğlu trained at İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi before becoming founder and chef of Hodan, where her work stays tied to Turkish cuisine and to the people who grow, trade, and cook around it. She has spoken of recipes that came from her own journey, including knocking on the doors of women in Rize to learn how to cook dishes such as stewed beans. That detail matters because the cooking here does not treat tradition as archive. It treats it as a living method, carried by hands, households, markets, and repetition.

At Hodan, she keeps the format restrained: crisp white tablecloths, minimal plates, and food expected to carry the weight without decoration doing the work for it. Fresh and seasonal ingredients anchor the kitchen, and Seferoğlu backs local agriculture and tradesmen through the restaurant’s sourcing. Hospitality sits inside the same discipline. Her promise for the room is peaceful and comfortable, a place where guests can feel at home, but the cooking remains alert to contrast: old flavors, quieter plates, a contemporary Turkish kitchen with its feet still in the region.

Turkish classics with a cleaner edge

The menu moves à la carte and through small plates, with seasonal rotations rather than a fixed grand statement. Hummus and crispy artichoke have become signatures, but the larger craft is in how Seferoğlu edits Turkish classics without thinning them out. İçli köfte arrives with silky yogurt, hot pistachio oil, and balanced spice, using temperature and fat as part of the seasoning. Stone-oven pide comes from a Mardin-style oven, giving the base its crispness and char before regional toppings finish the work.

The kitchen’s method favors clarity: mezze, breads, vegetables, and meat dishes composed so the source material still reads. Brie with karakovan honeycomb and toasted almonds brings a continental form into conversation with Turkish sweetness and texture. Fava bean chips can begin the meal as an amuse-bouche, a small signal that the bench is paying attention before the larger plates arrive. Brunch has its own place in the program, recognized by Gault & Millau with a Best Brunch Venue award, and it follows the same grammar of fresh produce, local sourcing, and measured presentation.

The beverage side stays curated rather than showy. Cocktails include a namesake Hodan drink, while the wine list leans toward independent producers and Turkish bottles that sit comfortably beside spice, yogurt, char, and herb. The point is not volume. It is fit.

Under the glass roof

The room gives the cooking a particular kind of stillness. Hodan sits in the historic Cezayir building in Firuzağa, within Beyoğlu, and occupies a garden terrace held under a domed glass roof. Natural light falls across masonry and tablecloths; later, intimate lighting turns the same surfaces softer. The effect is not rustic. It is sheltered.

That setting matters because Seferoğlu’s food asks for attention at table level. The pass can send out hummus, artichoke, pide, and içli köfte without having to compete with the room. Conversation stays possible. The room, the counter, and the garden all work in a lower register, giving the kitchen space to make Turkish cuisine feel both close and newly cut.

There is no need to turn Hodan into a manifesto. The plate in front of the guest holds stewed beans remembered through Rize, crisp artichoke, hot pistachio oil, and Çiğdem Seferoğlu.