What on the Plate Belongs to You?

A traditional recipe can change in technique, texture or presentation and still remain recognisable. But how far can it move and still remain the same dish? Saygın Sesli on deciding what to change — and when to stop.

Saygın Sesli, Executive Chef at Museum Hotel and Lil’a.

Heritage dishes present a peculiar creative problem. Their ingredients, techniques and associations may have taken shape long before the chef who encounters them. To reinterpret one is to decide which parts of it can move and which cannot.

For Saygın Sesli, the limit is not simply how much can be changed. A dish can become very good and still cease to be the dish he started with. Magelier spoke with the Executive Chef at Museum Hotel and its restaurant Lil’a about where that boundary lies, what happens when it is crossed, and what can belong to a chef when the recipe was there first.

When you begin working with a traditional recipe, what do you look at first? How do you distinguish between the parts of a dish that can and cannot be changed?

I think when I begin working with a traditional recipe, the first thing I look at is the story and origins of the dish. Where does it come from? Why was it made? What ingredients and techniques were originally used? I don’t think it is right to modernise a dish without first understanding these things.

For me, what cannot be changed is the character and memory of the dish. When you eat it, you should be able to sense the geography and culture it belongs to. At the same time, I think I can be more flexible when it comes to presentation, technique, texture, or the way certain ingredients are handled.

My aim is not really to change a traditional dish, but to preserve its essence and bring it into a form through which we can tell its story again today.

You choose to preserve some dishes as they are, while reinterpreting others. What determines the boundary between those two decisions? When you look at a recipe, is there ever something that makes you think, “I shouldn’t touch this”?

That boundary is actually determined by the recipe itself. I don’t think every dish needs to be reinterpreted. Sometimes a dish’s simplicity, technique, and the memory it carries are already so strong that leaving it as it is feels more appropriate than adding something to it.

The most important thing that makes me think, “I shouldn’t touch this,” is when the character of the dish is already very clear. Especially with dishes that have a strong regional identity and have carried the same feeling from the past into the present, too much intervention can cause the dish to lose its spirit.

But with some dishes, it is possible to preserve the essence of the tradition while saying something new through a different technique, texture, or presentation. I always ask myself: “Does this intervention tell the story of the dish better, or does it simply make it look different?”

If I am changing something just for the sake of making it different, that is where I stop. For me, reinterpretation needs to have a purpose and a story.

The ingredients, technique, proportions, or presentation of a recipe can change. What makes a dish still “that dish” for you? At what point does it become something else?

The most important thing that allows a dish to remain “that dish” is taste memory. If I can understand what the dish is from a single bite, then it is still preserving its essence.

The ingredients can change, the cooking technique can change, and even the presentation can be taken somewhere completely different. But the dish’s fundamental balance of flavours, its character, and the feeling it gives you should not disappear. Sometimes what defines a dish is not so much the individual ingredients as the feeling they create when they come together.

That is where the boundary begins. If, after the changes I have made, I can no longer read the story and taste memory of the dish, then I am no longer reinterpreting it; I am making a different dish.

That is why, when modernising something, I always ask myself: “Will someone eating this be able to understand where it came from?” If the answer is yes, then no matter how much I change it, I am still pursuing the same dish.

Have you ever started reinterpreting a recipe and then felt that you had gone too far and decided to go back? If so, what made you recognise that boundary?

Of course. In fact, I think this is one of the most instructive parts of the process. Sometimes, while reinterpreting a dish, you can become too focused on technique, presentation, or different ideas, and at some point you realise that you have moved away from the dish itself.

That boundary usually becomes apparent during the tasting process. I can taste something and think, “This has become a very good dish,” while at the same time feeling, “But this is no longer that dish.” That is when I go back.

Sometimes tastings with the team can also tell you a great deal. If someone who knows the dish says, “I can’t feel the original version here anymore,” that is an important warning for me. Because in the kitchen, you can sometimes become too attached to an idea.

Ultimately, my aim is not to show how much I can change something. It is to tell its story in a way that is better, clearer, and has a place in today’s kitchen. If an intervention takes something away from the spirit of the dish, I don’t see stepping back as a problem. On the contrary, sometimes I think the right decision is to remove something or move a little closer to the original.

Preserving an ingredient is not the same as preserving a recipe. For an ingredient at risk of disappearing, such as Alyanak wheat, to survive, it needs to be grown again, used, and in demand. Where do you see yourself, as a chef, within that chain?

I think we are right in the middle of that chain. Because preserving an ingredient is not only about keeping it; it is about producing it again, using it in the kitchen, and creating demand for it. At Lil’a, we try to be part of this process through our own gardens. We grow and harvest Alyanak wheat ourselves.

The most valuable part of this is not simply telling the story of the ingredient, but actually being involved in its journey from soil to plate. We use the wheat we harvest in our kitchen and serve it to our guests. In this way, the ingredient does not remain simply a value inherited from the past; it becomes something that is alive and in use today.

As a chef, I see myself as a bridge between the producer and the guest. The producer grows it, we work with the ingredient in the kitchen and add value to it, and the guest helps the cycle continue by consuming it.

Does working with an ingredient at risk of disappearing give you greater creative freedom, or does it make you work more carefully and within tighter boundaries?

I think it brings both. On the one hand, it increases your creativity because reconsidering an unusual ingredient from the past can open different doors. On the other hand, it requires you to be more careful, because what you have in your hands is not simply an ingredient, but a culture and a history of production that need to be preserved.

I don’t see this as a limitation. On the contrary, the right boundaries can sometimes make creativity even stronger. Because the aim is not to change the ingredient, but to bring out the value it already has more clearly.

Is there a difference for you between serving a reinterpretation of a dish to someone who has never tasted it before and serving it to someone who knows that dish from childhood or from their own home cooking?

Absolutely. Because two people looking at the same plate may not have the same memories. For someone who has never tasted the dish before, my interpretation may become their first connection with it. But for someone who has known the dish since childhood, the plate contains not only flavour but also a memory and a past.

That is why I am a little more careful when serving it to someone who already knows the dish. Rather than saying, “I modernised this,” I prefer the approach of, “I’m telling something you already know from a different perspective.” It is important to me that they do not completely lose the flavour they recognise.

With a guest who has never tasted it before, I can be a little freer. Because they have no preconceptions or established habits around the dish, I can communicate its story, technique, and flavour through my own interpretation.

But one thing remains the same in both cases: I want the guest to form a connection with the plate. One person by remembering their past, the other by discovering it for the first time. To me, that is one of the most beautiful aspects of reinterpretation.

Is there an ingredient, recipe, or technique that you believe is still at risk of disappearing today and that you would particularly like to see become part of the kitchen again?

There is, of course. In fact, it is difficult for me to name just one. There are still so many valuable ingredients and techniques across Anatolia waiting to be brought back into the kitchen.

At Lil’a, we try to keep these ingredients alive by growing them in our own gardens and using them in the kitchen. Alyanak wheat, Bitirgen apricots, and Topaç garlic are particularly valuable to me in this respect. Rather than seeing them simply as ingredients on a menu, I try to understand where they come from, how they are grown, and how they were used in the past.

I also believe that it is not only ingredients but traditional cooking and preservation techniques that need to be remembered again. Drying, fermentation, pickling, smoking, stone ovens, and wood fires are all very powerful aspects of Anatolian cuisine.

What I want is not to return to the past exactly as it was. I want to keep the valuable knowledge and ingredients of the past alive in today’s kitchen. Because for an ingredient to be genuinely preserved, it is not enough simply to talk about it; it needs to be grown, used, and find a place at the table.

“Creative Culinary Director” and “Executive Chef” may sound like closely related titles, but they describe different creative roles. From the first idea for a dish to the final plate that is served, where do these two roles diverge? At what point does one role give way to the other?

What matters is not so much where the two roles separate, but how they complement one another. The Creative Culinary Director is more concerned with determining the overall creative direction of the kitchen, its concept, and its long-term gastronomic vision. The Executive Chef, meanwhile, is responsible for implementing that idea in the day-to-day kitchen operation, managing the team, and bringing the dish to the standard required for service.

In my approach, there needs to be a dialogue from the very beginning. When an idea for a dish emerges, it needs to be workable in the kitchen, use the ingredient correctly, and maintain the same quality during service. This is where the Executive Chef’s experience and the realities of the kitchen come into play.

In other words, one answers the question, “What do we want to say?” while the other is more concerned with, “How do we bring this to life in the best possible way?”

By the time we reach the final plate, I think what emerges is a shared responsibility rather than the authority of a single person. No matter how good the idea is, if the plate does not convey the same feeling in service, it cannot be considered complete.

A traditional recipe already existed before you. When you reinterpret it, what on that plate belongs to you?

I think what belongs to me is not so much the recipe itself, but the way I look at it and the way I tell its story. A traditional recipe has a past and a story that existed before me. What I do is add my own understanding of cooking and my perspective today to that story.

Sometimes I change a technique, sometimes the texture, sometimes the presentation. But I don’t do this in order to say, “This is my dish now.” My signature emerges in the way I give the dish a new expression without disturbing its essence.

In a sense, I am trying to build a bridge between the past and the present. I want the guest to be able to feel something familiar when they look at the plate while also discovering an aspect of it they have not seen before.

So what belongs to me is not the story of the dish, but the way I tell that story today.

Images courtesy of Saygın Sesli / Museum Hotel