Araf İstanbul

Two chefs, one open kitchen, and a menu built around the cuts most restaurants leave off theirs — offal and variety meats, cooked with enough precision that people who think they don't like organ meat leave converted. Seating is a handful of stools at the kitchen bar, where you watch the whole service happen a metre away, plus four small tables for everyone else.

It sits inside a residential complex on the Anatolian side, the kind of quiet apartment block street you'd walk past without a second look. That was the whole point for years — a chef's table only regulars and word of mouth knew about. A Michelin mention has since found it, and somehow the room hasn't changed: still intimate, still run by the two people who opened it. It isn't cheap — expect to pay for it — but set against what a tasting menu costs at Istanbul's other Michelin-recognised kitchens, this is the good value in that tier.

Go with an appetite and no preconceptions about which cuts you'll enjoy. Book ahead — there is nowhere for a walk-in to sit.