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lunch & dinner, bar, cafe
Above the Fashion Brands Carousel at İstinye Park, Clove is a luxury Mediterranean bistrot by Başak Soykan and Yaprak Baltacı, opened in December 2023.
The kitchen is led by Chef Emre Şen, whose restaurant at Casa Lavanda holds a Michelin Star and a Michelin Green Star.
The rhythm of Clove
Clove moves in step with Istanbul. The café welcomes the first guests of the day. At lunch, the tables fill and the terrace catches the afternoon light. By evening, the restaurant gathers momentum — celebrations begin, another bottle arrives, conversations stretch longer than intended. From Friday at 22:00, the music shifts and Engin Yelkenci, one of the figures who shaped what Istanbul sounds like after dark, takes the room into the late hours. A lunch that turns into dinner. A quick drink that becomes a long conversation. From morning coffee to long dinners, the rhythm changes. The intention does not.
The kitchen of Emre Şen
The dishes at Clove rarely announce how much work has gone into them. That is intentional. Şen's cooking is ingredient-led, layered, and quietly precise — the technique grounded in his training under Chef Maurilio Garola at the Michelin-starred La Ciau del Tornavento in Alba, the philosophy shaped by his years leading Casa Lavanda. The goal is not to impress from a distance. It is to make dishes guests think about the next day.
The signatures are made here, by hand. The long-fermented sourdough pizzettas, blistered in Clove's own wood-fired oven. The pasta, made fresh in the kitchen every day. Line-caught fish from the Northern Aegean and the Black Sea — sea bass, turbot, the seasonal catch. Steak frites aged in-house in Clove's dry-aging room. Fresh truffle in season — Italian whites in autumn, Turkish blacks in winter. Wild mushrooms foraged from the forests around Istanbul. And the raw bar — sea bass crudo, tuna tartare, steak tartare, Gillardeau oysters, Ostreccia caviar.
A restaurant with a point of view
Architecture, art, music, light, and atmosphere are not separate layers at Clove. They belong to the same conversation. The architecture by Mahmut Anlar, the creative direction by Murat Türkili, and an evolving collection of contemporary art — anchored by the wall rising above the stairs between the café and the dining room — make a restaurant that takes a position. Nothing exists to impress. Everything exists for a reason.
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