Turkey’s only self-identified Taiwanese restaurant has solidified its place as a mainstay in the Aegean coastal city of Izmir after two years of hard work by a young couple who started new lives upon entering the unfamiliar industry.
Anyone in Taiwan would have no problem ordering Lunar New Year dishes with a phone call, but 8,000km away in Turkey, they would be hard pressed to find Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, drunken shrimp or niangao (年糕). Even enthusiastic chefs trying their hand at the recipes would find them not as simple as they seem.
Take the labor-intensive Buddha Jumps Over the Wall soup for example. Some dried ingredients must be rehydrated ahead of time while others must be cooked slowly, then layered carefully into a pot before it makes its way into a steamer for hours. Just thinking about the complicated process discourages even the most ambitious chefs from trying it themselves.
Photo: CNA
“Cooking skill is one thing,” a Taiwanese resident of the Turkish capital, Ankara, said. “In Turkey, it is difficult enough gathering all the ingredients. Ruining it after all that would be a travesty.”
Despite all of these obstacles, many Taiwanese living in Turkey still enjoyed full tables on Lunar New Year’s Eve this year, sagging under the weight of their favorite classics.
The woman responsible for these vacuum-sealed packs of nostalgia is Chen Yu-jun (陳俞均), owner of Jun Taiwanese Kitchen in Izmir.
This was the first time she took holiday orders in her two years running the restaurant. Chen gives all the credit to her fellow Taiwanese for their enthusiastic support, her eyes betraying her delight as the rest of her features hide behind her protective mask.
Since opening the restaurant at the end of 2019, it has remained the only one in Turkey that prominently displays “Taiwanese” in its name.
Its location near the Bay of Izmir in Konak — the administrative, arts, culture and commercial center of Izmir — makes the restaurant a popular destination for Japanese and Chinese tourists.
Local people, on the other hand, have a hard time accepting unfamiliar cuisines, Chen said.
Regardless, the restaurant has won over many locals who have become regular customers.
“The fact that our food can be accepted and liked by them is more rewarding than making money,” Chen said.
Pulling her mask down to settle in for an interview, Chen brushed away a suggestion that she is braver than most to have accomplished so much by the age of 27.
“I think that meeting him was enough,” she said about her Turkish husband, Sefa Turk Yilmaz. “I really didn’t think about it too much.”
“When I told my family I was going to marry someone from Turkey, they were also very composed,” she said. “My mom said that if I’m not happy, I can just come back.”
Chen began teaching English online at the age of 22 in Taichung. Yilmaz was one of her students.
Six months later, the student became a guide, as he showed Chen around Turkey on a visit that would become the start of her new life in the country.
After moving halfway around the world to marry Yilmaz, Chen committed herself to quickly learning Turkish to help her find work.
Thinking that a job search might be too much to handle while settling into a new country, he suggested they start a business of their own instead.
In his early 30s at the time, Yilmaz resigned from his job as a product manager for a metal processing firm and plunged headfirst into the restaurant business.
“He was quite careful, just a little slow,” Chen said. “When the restaurant got busy, he was too slow and couldn’t keep up.”
“Sometimes when the orders piled up, he would just stare at them, unsure of what to do,” she said, laughing at the memory. “That’s when I’d tell him: ‘What do you think you’re doing?’”
Yilmaz, who had been quietly sitting next to Chen, jumped into the conversation.
“Opening a restaurant was an idea we both had. We’ve been figuring it out as we go over the past two years,” he said.
“As our menu becomes more diverse, we keep getting busier, but isn’t that what starting a business is all about? There’s hardship and there’s joy,” he added.
On the February evening of our conversation, Izmir had escaped its deep freeze and Jun Taiwanese Kitchen was in the midst of a manageable dinnertime rush.
About 10 customers crowded into the narrow smoking area out front. Stepping inside, visitors are met with a prominent map of Taiwan next to a photograph of Taipei 101, opening up to a dining room that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, only contained 10 tables spaced apart, eight of which were occupied.
Easily visible in the semi-open kitchen was an employee dressed in all black who was busy preparing food while a woman sat nearby folding dumplings. She quickly filled the pan with tidy rows, enticing the customers who rank the dumplings among their favorite items on the menu.
“Kung pao chicken, sweet and sour chicken, wontons in chili oil and dumplings are the most popular,” Chen said. “We sell at least 300 in a day. Turkish customers like these crispy ones, especially with beef filling.”
“Even though we make them every day, we usually sell out,” she said, adding that owing to demand, she has taught every employee how to wrap a perfect dumpling.
When she first moved to Turkey, Chen said she had trouble adjusting to Turkish food, and the Asian restaurants “weren’t right,” so she took it upon herself to upgrade from home cook to chef.
“The worst was when I had kung pao chicken at an Asian restaurant and it came out watery,” she said. “So I had the idea to make it myself.”
“We started with a small storefront to test the waters, and when it went pretty well after a year, we moved to this bigger location,” she said. “This is the top battlefield for all the old-school Asian restaurants. There are about 10 or so now.”
Even with the competition, Chen said that she does not adjust her recipes to cater to local tastes.
“I think of it this way: If a dish isn’t authentic, then I won’t sell it,” she said. “So when making the menu, if we think Turkish customers won’t like it, we don’t add it.”
Yilmaz said that he is becoming more Taiwanese by the day. He likes drinking shaken tea from the restaurant and takes seriously his self-appointed role as cultural ambassador.
“My wife is Taiwanese, so of course I want to help her promote it and introduce Taiwan to Turkish people,” he said.
Looking back on the blur that was the past five years, Yilmaz said that the experience makes him think of kung pao chicken — “sweet, salty, spicy and sour” all at once.
“There is sweetness in the spice and spice in the sweetness,” he said.
“At first it makes your tongue a little numb and spicy, then a sweet and sour flavor takes over,” he said. “The chicken is tender and fresh, the peanuts crunchy.”
“I could eat it every day. Even decades later, I wouldn’t get sick of it,” he added.
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