At the Culture Road Festivals, Türkiye’s old dishes make their debut

For many years Türkiye treated gastronomy as nothing more than “the presentation of food.” Yet the real question was whether a nation could keep its memory, its past and its cultural codes alive at the table. It is precisely here that the Culture Road Festivals, organised by the Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism, became an important turning point.

The festivals, to be held for the third time this year, have spent two years reintroducing cities to themselves — not only through music or art, but through their history, their street culture and, most of all, their culinary memory. Because a city’s true identity is hidden not in its modern signage, but in its forgotten cooking pots.

For years one of Türkiye’s greatest gastronomic problems was that the old dishes could find no place in restaurants. While century-old recipes struggled to survive in home kitchens, cities were slowly losing their own culinary character. But today we can see that this picture has begun to change.

The festival’s real achievement

This is exactly where the real achievement of the Culture Road Festivals shows itself. The festival does not merely stage events; it researches the gastronomic genes of cities, brings the dishes of the past back into daylight, and encourages businesses to keep that inheritance alive. After two years it is now possible to see old dishes returning to restaurant menus in many cities across Türkiye.

I have taken part in this process myself, working above all to bring the old dishes of Adana gastronomy back to life in working kitchens. I believed it was not enough to talk about the recipes; they had to be truly cooked. I did my own share so that the vision the Ministry set out would move forward as it was intended.

Looking at where we stand today, I see that the businesses cooking in the old way, the ones that claim the recipes of the past as their own, are slowly coming to the fore. This is not only a gastronomic success; it is cultural memory getting back on its feet.

The day a country loses the dishes of its past, it begins to lose its stories too. Türkiye is now putting those stories back on the table.