Gastronomy is never just about recipes. At its best, it becomes a way of translating the spirit of a place onto the table. Through Hatay Gurme, Barış Deveci creates a stage for that idea, while Antakya Bakkalı carries the memory of Hatay into contemporary kitchens and dining tables.
In a time when modern gastronomy often revolves around speed, presentation and replication, Hatay cuisine continues to defend something slower and more emotional: memory, geography and authenticity. We spoke with Barış Deveci about the anatomy of flavor, the cultural depth of Hatay cuisine and why truly unforgettable dishes are rarely the most complicated ones.
Cuisine and Philosophy
If you had to describe Hatay cuisine through a single feeling, what would it be?
You can tell when someone truly knows how to cook from the very first bite. It cannot really be explained through measurements or recipes. It’s a feeling. Hatay cuisine is exactly like that. It doesn’t try to explain itself for too long; it expresses everything through a single plate. And when it’s done properly, that plate gives you more than food. It gives you the memory of a geography.
What makes a dish feel truly authentic to you?
For a dish to feel authentic, aroma, flavor and appearance have to exist in harmony. If one of them is missing, something feels incomplete. It’s not enough for food to simply taste good. It should pull you in with its aroma, create anticipation visually and leave a lasting emotional feeling once you taste it.
Is flavor more about technique or emotion?
Completely emotion. Technique is like learning how to play an instrument; anyone can learn it. But making people feel something with that instrument is entirely different. A good dish reflects the emotional state of the person making it. Technique satisfies hunger, but emotion takes people somewhere else.
The Anatomy of Flavor
Why can two people cook the same dish but never achieve the same flavor?
It may sound cliché, but this is where what we call “the touch of the cook” becomes real. It’s not only about habit or skill. It’s about the relationship you build with food. Even with identical ingredients, the result changes depending on how you approach the dish.
What is the most important element of a good plate?
Ingredients. Everything begins there. It’s impossible to create genuinely good food with weak ingredients. No matter how advanced the technique is, anything built on poor products eventually collapses. The best chefs are not the ones hiding ingredients, but the ones revealing their true character.
What do you think people misunderstand most about Hatay cuisine?
Hatay cuisine has an incredibly rich cultural depth, yet even people from Hatay often don’t fully understand it. We don’t spend enough time researching it or learning from it. Most of the time, we judge before we truly understand.
Geography and Ingredients
Can you genuinely taste the difference in products that come from Hatay?
Absolutely. And this isn’t just romantic storytelling. The mineral structure of the soil, the humidity of the air, the relationship between the olive tree and the sun — all of these shape the identity of the ingredient. When you compare it with a product grown elsewhere, even under the same name, the difference becomes obvious.
How do you recognise quality in products like olive oil, spices or pomegranate molasses?
Geography defines the character of the product. But beyond that, choosing the right producers and maintaining continuous quality control also matters enormously.
Can the same flavor exist without geography?
No. Geography is not simply a location on a map. It’s climate, soil, water, people and accumulated cultural memory. Flavor only appears when all of those things come together. Remove one of them, and what remains may look similar, but it will never truly be the same.
That philosophy also shapes the products curated through Antakya Bakkalı, where preserving the regional identity of Hatay remains central.
The Restaurant Experience
How would you define a truly good restaurant experience?
Flavor sits at the centre of it, but service and atmosphere complete the experience. When people enter a restaurant, they’re not simply eating; they’re stepping into a rhythm, an atmosphere and a story. A good restaurant experience should feel effortless, almost making time disappear.
What matters more: food, atmosphere or service?
Service. Because service is the frame around the meal. You cannot present a masterpiece inside a weak frame. The service team becomes the silent narrator of the evening. They control the rhythm, manage the silence and elevate the entire experience almost invisibly.
Is there a detail guests rarely notice but you care deeply about?
The cleanliness of restrooms. People sometimes laugh when I say this, but I’m serious. That space is the backstage of a restaurant. Guests unconsciously judge the entire hygiene philosophy of the place through that detail. Small things either build trust or destroy it.
Tradition and Time
Should Hatay cuisine remain protected, or should it evolve?
Both. Protecting tradition and embracing evolution are not opposites. A tree with strong roots grows more freely. Hatay cuisine can absolutely evolve without losing its spirit or its connection to geography. But before changing something, you first need to truly understand it.
Is altering traditional recipes acceptable?
That depends entirely on intention. Even within Hatay, recipes change from one neighbourhood to another. Tradition itself has always evolved over time. What matters is whether change comes from ego or from respect.
Do you think some flavors are disappearing over time?
Definitely. Some recipes disappear completely once older generations are gone because they were never documented. Only certain hands knew them. During the earthquake, Hatay lost more than buildings. It lost people and the memories they carried. That’s the painful part. But awareness is growing now, and so are efforts to document these culinary traditions before it’s too late.
Perspective
Why isn’t Hatay cuisine more globally visible?
Because it’s a difficult cuisine. It doesn’t naturally adapt itself to fast consumption. It demands patience, knowledge and geography. The cuisines that become globally widespread are usually easier to replicate. Hatay cuisine resists replication. To truly experience it, you need to encounter it at its source. Perhaps that is its greatest weakness — but also its greatest strength.
What is Turkish cuisine still missing on the global stage?
Unity. Turkish cuisine is incredibly diverse, but that diversity rarely moves together under a shared narrative. Everyone protects their own region and recipes individually. The world’s great culinary cultures manage to speak collectively. We still haven’t fully achieved that.
What Makes a Dish Unforgettable
Is there a dish you personally never forgot?
I still remember the stale bread my grandmother used to fry in a black pan. Even now, I can almost smell that kitchen. The sound of the oil, the texture of the bread changing over heat… None of the ingredients were luxurious. Just stale bread, a little oil and maybe a tomato. But somehow that plate always said something to me. Perhaps that’s why I still return to that memory — to understand what luxury looks like when nothing is trying to impress you.
So what ultimately makes a dish unforgettable?
Freedom and simplicity. The more a plate tries to shout, the less it actually says. Truly unforgettable dishes are usually the simplest ones — where the ingredient is allowed to exist in its purest form, without unnecessary intervention. My grandmother’s dish was exactly that. It wasn’t trying to prove anything. It simply existed. And that made it powerful.
VOGGIA Perspective
What Barış Deveci ultimately describes is not only the cuisine of Hatay, but a relationship between memory, geography and people. At a time when modern gastronomy often celebrates speed, performance and visual perfection, Hatay cuisine still values patience, transmission and authenticity. Perhaps that is why the most unforgettable dishes are still the ones carrying a story within them.
