The Best Lahmacun in Istanbul: 6 Outstanding Lahmacun Places
Öz Kilis in Fatih and wood-fired Borsam Taşfırın in Kadıköy serve the best lahmacun in Istanbul. 6 spots, what to order, and how to eat it like a local.
Ask us where to eat the best lahmacun in Istanbul and the first name out is Öz Kilis Kebap ve Lahmacun Salonu in Fatih, which bakes Antep-style lahmacun two ways: one topped with onion, one with garlic. Over on the Asian side, Borsam Taşfırın in the middle of the Kadıköy market cooks its lahmacun in a wood-fire oven and still fills two floors at lunch. The other four places on this list each earn their spot for a different reason, from a Kadıköy shop with more than 45 years behind the counter to a Diyarbakır-style lahmacun made without onion or garlic.
Lahmacun is a round flatbread of thin pita dough topped with minced meat, tomatoes, onions, and parsley, and you find it everywhere Turkish street food is sold, from counter shops to kebab houses. Tourists call it Turkish pizza. The comparison only goes so far: there is no cheese, and the crust is much thinner. The meat is usually lamb, rarely beef.
Everyone eats it their own way. Some squeeze lemon over the whole thing. Others pile on sumac onions and roll it into a wrap. Antep-style garlic lahmacun has its loyalists, and so does the spicy Urfa style made with onion. Across all of those styles, two things separate a great lahmacun from an average one. The dough must be crispy, and the meat should be minced by hand with a curved knife called a zirh. Hand mincing takes a long time, and a machine-minced lahmacun never tastes as good. If you want to try the dish at your own stove first, our Turkish lahmacun recipe walks through the homemade version.
Here is the whole list at a glance, then the detail on each place below.
| Place | Area | What to order | Price level |
|---|---|---|---|
| Öz Kilis Kebap ve Lahmacun Salonu | Fatih | Garlic Antep lahmacun, Şiveydiz soup, ayran in a copper cup | Cheap eat |
| Halil Lahmacun | Kadıköy | Mild lahmacun rolled with parsley and lemon, homemade ayran | Cheap eat |
| Borsam Taşfırın | Kadıköy | Wood-fired lahmacun with sumac and pickled hot peppers | Cheap eat |
| Çıtır Pide Lahmacun Salonu | Beşiktaş | Lahmacun from the wood-fired brick oven; pide for the table | Cheap eat |
| Buketist Lahmacun | Mecidiyeköy | Diyarbakır-style oval lahmacun with ezme salad on the side | Cheap eat |
| Gaziantepli Mehmet Usta | Fatih | Garlicky Antep-style lahmacun from the wood-fired oven | Cheap eat |
All six are cheap eats: counter shops and small salons where lahmacun, ayran, and a plate of greens make the whole bill. Four sit on the European side, two in Fatih plus one each in Beşiktaş and Mecidiyeköy. The other two stand a few doors apart on Güneşlibahçe Sokak in the middle of the Kadıköy market, so the Asian side hands you two of the six in one short walk. Pick by the side of the water you are staying on; if Kadıköy wins, our guide to the best restaurants on the Asian side of Istanbul covers what else is across the water.
What cuisine does lahmacun belong to?
Lahmacun is an Arabic word, and the dish was eaten across Middle Eastern Arabic countries and southeastern Turkey long before it became popular across the rest of the country. Pinning it to a single cuisine is hard. Turkish, Kurdish, Armenian, and Arabic kitchens all cook it.
1. Öz Kilis Kebap ve Lahmacun Salonu, Fatih
Öz Kilis bakes two kinds of Antep lahmacun: one with onions and one with garlic, which is the bolder order. If you are there in spring, start with the Şiveydiz soup, a seasonal house specialty made with fresh onions, fresh garlic, strained yogurt, chickpeas, and lamb.
With the lahmacun itself, drink the foamy ayran served in a copper cup. The restaurant sits in Fatih on the European side, easy to reach, with prices at the cheap-eat level. If lahmacun has never won you over before, this is the place that will do it.
2. Halil Lahmacun, Kadıköy
Halil serves the mildest lahmacun on this list, and it is one of the oldest lahmacun shops in town, opened in 1980 by Halil Dörtok, an Urfa native who gave up tailoring to bake lahmacun. His son Fuat runs it today. The shop is small, full of locals, and a few steps from the fish stalls of the Kadıköy market.
Order spicy or non-spicy. Either way it arrives with a slice of lemon and parsley: pile on as much parsley as you want, squeeze the lemon, roll it, and eat it as a wrap like everyone around you. The homemade ayran and the cheese pita have followings of their own. For locals on the Asian side, a midday shopping run through Kadıköy often ends here with a quick lunch. More places to eat in the neighborhood are in our Kadıköy restaurants guide.
3. Borsam Taşfırın, Kadıköy
Borsam Taşfırın cooks its lahmacun in a wood-fire oven, and the crispy dough shows it. The founder, Sinan Borsam, is a chef with more than 30 years of experience, and the operation has grown to three branches in Kadıköy. The main one, in the middle of the Kadıköy market, fills up across two floors.
Each lahmacun comes with plenty of parsley, lemon, sumac, and pickled hot peppers. Borsam draws a steady stream of tourists from the market crowds too, and the prices stay at the cheap-eat level.
4. Çıtır Pide Lahmacun Salonu, Beşiktaş
Çıtır has been in Beşiktaş since 1993 and remains one of the most popular lahmacun stops for locals in the area. The owners come from Mardin in southeastern Turkey, where this kind of baking is a specialty, which explains why both the lahmacun and the pide taste so good. This is also one of the few places in the city using a brick oven with a wood fire.
You may be served knives and forks here. Those are for the pide, a dish we rank across the city in our guide to the best pide in Istanbul. Lahmacun is eaten by hand, no silverware, and the crispy dough makes a quick lunch of it if you find yourself around Beşiktaş.
5. Buketist Lahmacun, Mecidiyeköy
Buketist is a small shop in Mecidiyeköy on the European side serving Turkish fast food, and the signature dish is the lahmacun: Diyarbakır style, rolled oval, and made without onion or garlic in the recipe. The shop dates its Diyarbakır tradition back to 1975.
It comes with ezme salad and a side of parsley, lettuce, onion, and lemon, so you build the flavor yourself at the table. If someone in your group wants something else, there are pides and kebabs too.
6. Gaziantepli Mehmet Usta, Fatih
The smell of fresh dough and spices reaches you before the door does. Gaziantepli Mehmet Usta pairs a shabby-chic room with excellent lahmacun, and the combination puts it in any honest conversation about the three or four best in the city.
The style is Antep: thin crispy dough, garlic in the topping, and meat chopped by hand with a cleaver, then baked over a wood fire. Kebabs fill out the menu, but the lahmacun is the reason to come. Vedat Milor, Turkey’s best-known restaurant critic, lists the shop in his Gurman Atlas and credits part of the result to the flour, darker and firmer than what most shops use.
The location takes commitment: Koca Mustafapaşa Caddesi at the southern edge of Fatih, a residential pocket most visitors never reach.
Final words
Now you know where to go the next time the lahmacun craving hits, on either side of the water. One lahmacun rarely ends a meal, so leave room for künefe after, or take the braver detour to kokoreç while you are in the Kadıköy market anyway. To plan the rest of your meals, start with our guide to the best food in Istanbul and work through the classics of traditional Turkish food. And if you would rather eat your way through Kadıköy with a local leading, our Istanbul street food tour covers the neighborhood in three evening hours, in a group capped at 10 guests.
