Islak Hamburger Taksim

The burgers at the Taksim end of Sıraselviler Caddesi wait in a glass cabinet fogged from the inside, stacked in damp rows with the lid of each bun gone dark. The cook lifts one out with tongs and it is warm through, and the paper under it turns translucent within seconds. Two or three go over the counter at a time, because each is only a few bites: a thin garlicky beef patty in a small soft roll that has spent hours taking on its sauce. The sauce is tomato, garlic and spice, and the bread holds so much of it that patty and bun eat as one soft, savory piece, hot and sweet from the tomato, sharp with garlic, with a faint chew where the beef sits inside.

The cabinet is the equipment that matters. Steam keeps the buns hot and keeps them wet, so a burger made at four in the afternoon and still sitting there at nine goes on soaking, and the family behind Kızılkayalar maintains that it improves on the hot tray. Leave a tray through a slow stretch and the bread slumps into paste, the patty tightens, and the garlic flattens into the tomato. A busy counter turns its trays quickly, which is why the late-evening and after-midnight crowds at Taksim tend to get the better burgers. The good ones are warm in the hand, give under a thumb, and hold together long enough to reach the mouth.

Eating one is mostly heat and smell. The steam lifts garlic and cooked tomato off the cabinet while you wait, the bun comes apart without resistance, the patty gives, and there is no crunch anywhere in it. The sauce is oily and sticky enough to cling to the fingers, and it runs down the wrist if the second one is eaten too fast. People eat standing on the pavement with a paper square in one hand, usually after a night of drinking, and most go back for another before they have finished the first.

Kızılkayalar, at Sıraselviler Caddesi 2/C, is the name most visitors meet first when they come up from the metro. Cevat Kızılkaya, who came to Istanbul from Çayeli on the Black Sea coast of Rize, spent about twenty years adjusting the patty and the sauce, and the family has its bun baked to a private recipe by a friend. The sauce formula stays inside the family, and a heavy pan that holds its heat is said to be part of the method. A few doors along at 2/J, Bambi was opened in 1974 by Mustafa Güner, another Çayeli man, at the age of nineteen, and it sells the same small burgers singly or as a menu with fries and a drink. A büfe in Istanbul is a counter shop selling quick, cheap, standing food, and each of these has its own cabinet and its own regulars arguing over whose sauce carries more garlic.

The counter economics suit Taksim after midnight. The patty is thin enough to cook through quickly, the sauce is identical in every burger, and the steam holds the whole tray at one temperature, so a worker can hand over a stack of them without touching a spatula. People leaving the clubs and bars on Sıraselviler want something warm, small and quick to hand over, and the lines at the cabinets run late into the night. The paper square, the tongs and a steady hand are all the service a counter needs, which keeps the line moving when the street is full.

Origin and history

Kristal Büfe, on Halaskargazi Caddesi in Harbiye, says its founder Ahmet Yazıcı made the first wet burger by accident while hurrying an order, dressing the patty in boiling tomato sauce. The shop dates its hamburgers to 1962 and Yazıcı has said his counter brought the hamburger to Turkey. No record settles which Istanbul counter served the first soaked one.

The Kızılkaya family's own history starts in 1972, when they took over a büfe on Taksim Square that another operator had run. Memiş Kızılkaya, Cevat's son, dates the establishment now called Kızılkayalar to 1975, still as tenants. In 1978 Cevat bought the shop with his cousin Alaaddin Kızılkaya, and the büfe took the family name, with customers soon calling it Kızılkayalar Hamburger after the wet burger it sold.

The family registered the Kızılkaya hamburger as a trademark in 1994, when the counter was selling about 500 to 600 burgers a day. By 2005 the count was at least 2,000 to 2,500 a day, with more on weekends, and shipments were going to Ankara, İzmir and Trabzon.