The table
Neolokal
Karaköy · Istanbul
A one-star dining room on the top floor of SALT Galata, in Karaköy, where Maksut Aşkar reworks Anatolian cooking for the modern table, sourcing by season and by soil, and which also holds a Michelin Green Star for the way the kitchen is run.
Modern Anatolian built on the country's own larder. Maksut Aşkar reads the regional traditions of Anatolia and remakes them with current technique rather than leaving them under glass. Olive oil, grains, pulses, vegetables and the Aegean catch drive the plates, worked with restraint rather than display. The format is a tasting menu that turns with the season, tied to named Turkish producers and an eye on the soil's own cycles, with dishes that reach back to the cooking Aşkar grew up with and rebuild it for now. The room sits high in the restored Ottoman Bank building that now holds a cultural institution, with the city below, and service reads the table and adjusts, attentive without ceremony.
It holds one Michelin star in the 2025 Guide Türkiye, the selection for Istanbul, İzmir and Muğla, and it was awarded a Michelin Green Star in 2022, the only Istanbul restaurant to receive one that year. That second award is the point for VANE: a serious city kitchen that cooks its own country and runs on principle as much as on flavour. Aşkar built the place himself and keeps it personal, and the setting earns its keep without carrying the meal, a dining room above the old banking quarter rather than in a hotel tower. It is the table that argues Istanbul can hold the top level on Anatolian terms.
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