Istanbul Culinary Institute

Istanbul Culinary Institute is an educational and vocational center for the culinary arts. Dedicated to promoting Turkish cuisine nationally and globally, introducing different culinary cultures to local audiences, and training professional cooks for the industry, it offers a diverse range of certificate programs and cooking courses.

Combining its educational mission with cultural and business objectives under the same roof, it includes a school of culinary arts, a practice restaurant (Enstitü), and its gourmet store, the Enstitü Shop featuring food items produced on the premises. The center also hosts cooking workshops for amateurs, seminars, films and exhibitions about the culinary cultures of Turkey and the world at large and supports culinary publications, with plans to start its own newsletter soon.

Turkish cuisine is the fortunate heir to the rich and diverse culinary cultures of the Ottoman Empire spread over the entire Eastern Mediterranean, from the Balkans to the Middle East. Deriving its inspiration from the centuries-old culinary traditions of this vast geography, Istanbul Culinary Institute seeks to re-present Turkish cooking with a contemporary face. The objective is to introduce a curriculum of familiar, popular, and widely consumed dishes that can be prepared simply and tastefully with easily available seasonal ingredients while conforming to the cultural, hygenic and aesthetic standards of our times.