Kitchen Istanbul

The owner between table and pass

A table check can pull the owner back toward the pass; Emrah Kilicoglu, owner and executive chef at Kitchen Istanbul in San Francisco, keeps the cooking and the room under the same hand. He has held that double station since opening the restaurant in 2013, after the Clement Street address moved on from its Troya identity and became Kitchen Istanbul. The work is Turkish-forward without turning the room into a lesson: mezes first, charcoal-grilled kebabs, moussaka in its own dish, lamb chops, künefe, rice pudding. Local ingredients sit inside a traditional frame, which is the discipline here. Kilicoglu directs the kitchen while carrying ownership, a practical arrangement that shows in the way the place moves. The food needs to land with warmth, not flourish, and the service has to keep pace with a wine program that asks for attention. That combination gives the restaurant its lane in the Richmond District: a neighborhood room with a chef-owner still close enough to the station to feel the pressure of each plate.

A wine list built producer first

Joseph DiGrigoli directs the wine at Kitchen Istanbul, a post he has held since 2023 after work at Quince and Cotogna. His list is producer-driven, low in markup, broad in scope, and shaped to sit naturally with the food rather than above it. The program looks for bottles grounded in sensible farming and lifted by native yeasts, with selection doing more of the speaking than display. Kitchen Istanbul carries an extensive list with hundreds of selections and a 17-page format, moving from Australian Syrah to Santa Cruz Mountains Chardonnay without losing the table. DiGrigoli has described the aim plainly: “My goal is to have a producer-driven program that features low markups and covers a lot of ground.” With Turkish mezes, lamb, beef dumplings, sea bream, and moussaka all asking different things of a glass, range matters. Restraint matters more.

Warm light on Clement Street

The room at 349 Clement Street works at a low volume. Candelabra chandeliers give the tables a warm glow; esoteric movie posters keep the walls from becoming too polished. The counter and the pass are not treated as theater, but the house still lets the craft remain visible in small ways: pita beside dips, bechamel over moussaka, the pull of cheese in künefe, a bottle placed where the label can be read before it is poured. The scale is intimate, with enough quiet for a table to talk through a bottle and enough movement for the kitchen to feel awake. When the night settles into its rhythm, Kilicoglu’s food and DiGrigoli’s cellar meet at the same point: moussaka, lamb chops, and a producer’s name on Clement Street.