Food History of Gaziantep

Key eras

6000 years on the Antep plateau

Gaziantep sits where the Arab Middle East meets Turkish Anatolia, and its kitchen reads like the freight manifest of that crossroads. Cumin, sumac, fennel, mint, saffron and cinnamon all arrive through the same trade routes as the copper and the silk, and the city built a cuisine around combining them rather than choosing between them.

The Ottoman han economy

The old city grew around covered markets and caravanserais rather than around palaces. Zincirli Bedesten went up in 1718 under Darendeli Hüseyin Paşa with 73 units under one roof, and the coppersmiths worked beside them. Those hans are still where Gaziantep buys spice, grinds coffee and eats breakfast today.

1635 to 1871, coffee and baklava

Two dates anchor the city's sweet and bitter poles. Tahmis Kahvesi has poured coffee beside the grain market since 1635, and menengiç, brewed from wild terebinth rather than coffee beans, became the house drink. In 1871 Mehmet and Güllü Çelebi came back from Damascus with the trade and opened a baklava shop on Uzun Çarşı, the workshop the whole Güllüoğlu line descends from.

1887 onwards, the kebab houses

İmam Çağdaş opened in 1887 when Hacı Hüseyin Efendi registered as the 34th tradesman in the city, moving to Uzun Çarşı in 1898. The model spread: a single family, one grill, one baklava counter, handed down. Metanet followed in 1975 and turned beyran, a lamb and rice broth, into a dish the whole country now recognises.

2015, UNESCO City of Gastronomy

UNESCO named Gaziantep a Creative City of Gastronomy in 2015, the only Turkish city to hold the title. The municipality followed with a culinary arts centre teaching the city's recipes to young chefs, and with GastroAntep each September. The claim rests on roughly 500 dishes counted as specific to the city.

2023 earthquake and after

The February 2023 earthquakes hit Gaziantep hard, and parts of the old city needed structural work before they could trade again. Most of the named kitchens reopened, but addresses shifted and some counters did not come back. Any list written before 2023 needs checking against the shop door.

Immigrant influences

• Aleppo and northern Syria: Traders and cooks moving up from Aleppo brought the pepper-paste and pistachio habits that define Antep cooking, and İmam Çağdaş traces its own founder to Aleppo in 1887.
• Syrian arrivals since 2011: Around a fifth of the city's population arrived from Syria after 2011, and Levantine kitchens such as Eşter now sell fava, hummus and falafel alongside the Antep grills.
• Armenian Antep: The mansions of Bey Mahallesi were built by Armenian families, and one of them now houses Papirüs Cafe, whose courtyard and painted rooms survive as the clearest trace of that community.
• Kurdish and southeastern Anatolian: Movement from Urfa, Adıyaman and the wider southeast pushed isot, çiğ köfte and liver breakfasts deeper into the Gaziantep repertoire than in any other western Turkish city.

Signature innovations

• Dry baklava, engineered so Antep pistachio pastry could survive the journey out of the city.
• Menengiç coffee, ground from wild terebinth so the city could drink coffee without coffee beans.
• Isot pepper, sun-dried then sweated under cloth until it turns near-black and smoky.
• Katmer as a breakfast course rather than a dessert, stretched to transparency and baked to order.
• Beyran, a lamb and rice broth built for a five in the morning start before the bazaar opens.
• Küşleme, an unmarinated lamb tenderloin kebab priced and portioned by the gram.