Maçakızı, Göltürkbükü, restaurant review, VANE

Name: Maçakızı
Address: Göltürkbükü

A one-star dining room at the Maçakızı hotel above the bay at Göltürkbükü, on the Bodrum peninsula, where Aret Sahakyan cooks modern Aegean food off the day's catch, in a room that was shorthand for a certain kind of Turkish summer long before Michelin reached the coast.

By Dimitris Stathopoulos

The cooking

Modern Aegean, read through one chef's long history. Aret Sahakyan was born in Istanbul to an Armenian family and cooked at Cities in Washington before following Sahir Erozan back to Bodrum, where he has held the kitchen for more than twenty-five years. The food carries all of that at once: Turkish home cooking and his Istanbul and Armenian inheritance, Aegean produce, a little Italian flavour and French technique underneath. Seafood leads, worked with olive oil and herbs and read off what the boats and the season give up rather than a fixed card, raw honeyed figs with goat cheese and pistachio oil among the dishes the room is known for. The wine list runs deep on Turkish growers, with a long pour by the glass. The restaurant works the warm months only, roughly March to November, and sits on the hillside above the bay at Göltürkbükü, a beach club down at the water and the Aegean through the pines. Service keeps the ease of a house that has taken in guests for decades.

Why it is in VANE

It holds one Michelin star in the Michelin Guide Türkiye, awarded when the guide first reached Bodrum and kept since. The case for it is the room as much as the plate. Ayla Emiroğlu arrived in Bodrum in 1977 and opened a sixteen-room guesthouse she called Maçakızı, the queen of spades, after her own nickname, and the place became shorthand for a certain Aegean summer years before Michelin came to the coast. Her son Sahir Erozan brought it into a second era, and the kitchen is Sahakyan's on his own terms, a chef cooking his own mixed inheritance through the produce of one peninsula. It adds Bodrum to the collection, the Turkish Aegean's most storied address, and earns the star on the food rather than the postcard. A researched profile, drawn from the restaurant's own record and Michelin's listing, not a first-hand VANE visit.

Where

Maçakızı, Göltürkbükü, on the Bodrum peninsula, Muğla, Türkiye

Kitchen

Chef Aret Sahakyan, in the kitchen for more than twenty-five years

Michelin

One star, Michelin Guide Türkiye, held since the guide reached Bodrum

Style

Modern Aegean, seafood-led, with Turkish, Armenian and Italian threads

Best for

The seasonal seafood menu, in the room above the bay

VANE selection. Chosen with a critic's eye and judged independently. It's here because we judged it, not because it paid.
On this profile: a researched profile, drawn from the restaurant's own record and reporting, not a claim of a first-hand visit. Where we have eaten there, the review says so.
Image: original VANE artwork; photography to follow.

Maçakızı

The cooking

Why it is in VANE

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