Istanbul has long ignited the imagination of travelers, writers and historians. Minarets pierce the skyline, the call to prayer echoes off the clouds and the tantalising smell of food dances on the waves of the Bosporus. With a culinary tradition going back hundreds of years, visitors aren’t short of choice — from street food to restaurants at the high end. For those who want to dine like a sultan, a restaurant right next to an old Byzantine church brings old Ottoman recipes to the table.

Located near the Chora Church in Istanbul’s historical Fatih district, Asitane is the brainchild of the industrialist father of Batur Durmay, the present owner. Whenever he wanted to treat his foreign guests to a good Turkish meal, he would ask his wife to cook up a feast at home. After many years of cooking business dinners almost weekly, she eventually said enough was enough and urged her husband to open a restaurant. When the complex of buildings surrounding Chora Museum came on the market, the family bought it to house a new restaurant.

From the beginning, the restaurant wanted to feature Ottoman cuisine and so began to look for authentic recipes with the help of a family friend, Engin Turker. They discovered a huge library — including records from famous Ottoman palaces such as Topkapi in Istanbul and those in Bursa and Edirne. They combed through “narh” books (official records designed to keep market prices of staple goods at a certain level so products could not be stockpiled and then sold on the black market for inflated prices), poems, reports from foreign dignitaries who visited the Ottoman courts, tax ledgers and more.

It was no easy task — despite the wealth of information, many dishes were listed under multiple names. Few came complete with exact recipes and those that did were vague when it came to details like cooking techniques, specific steps, ingredients and quantities. Once the Asitane team established what went into particular dishes, they set about the task of making them.