Kitchen Istanbul
Büşra Ayvaz grew up in Giresun, on Turkey's Black Sea coast, and took over this Clement Street kitchen in 2024. She rewrote the whole menu in the summer of 2025. The MICHELIN Guide made it one of seven new Bib Gourmands in the 2026 California selection. The San Francisco Chronicle's critics put it at No. 55 on their 2026 Top 100 in the Bay Area, up from No. 69 in 2025.
Why go
Emrah Kilicoglu worked this room as a busboy before he owned it, and reopened it in 2013.7 Esther Mobley is the Chronicle's senior wine critic. In 2021 she wrote that sommeliers had started spending their nights off here. Kilicoglu's old customers, he told her, were people 65 and older who live in the Presidio.
4 Joseph DiGrigoli runs the list now.
Ayvaz cooked in Asian and Italian kitchens in Turkey before Miami and New Orleans. It shows on a menu that is still Turkish. She puts gochujang in the broth under the mussels, where Aleppo or Urfa pepper would go. Cubes of sujuk go in with it, the spiced fermented beef sausage. The charcoal-grilled prawns arrive head-on, four to an order. They sit on a buttery fish-stock sauce dusted with olives dried and ground to powder.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the mussels, $27 in October 2025.
- Order: the prawns, $25 then, and suck the heads.
- Order: the rice pudding, blackened on top like a Basque cheesecake and scattered with hazelnuts.
- Order: the manti. The MICHELIN Guide calls the manti a signature dish here.6
- Avoid: turning up on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. The kitchen is dark both nights.
What locals & experts say
- MacKenzie Chung Fegan, San Francisco Chronicle, October 2025:
Those mussels, a take on surf-and-turf, should grace your table.
1 - The same critic and Cesar Hernandez, March 2026:
Kitchen Istanbul landed on our list last year, but, if we're being honest, it wasn't exactly because of the food.
2 - The MICHELIN Guide California inspector, on the dessert:
the künefe kadayif, featuring crispy, buttery, syrup-kissed kataifi, melty cheese and a flurry of crushed pistachio, is best in class.
5
Good to know
- Getting in: book on OpenTable.
- The list: small allocated producers on open shelving, with wine club boxes stacked beside them waiting for pickup.1
- Where the owner eats: Kilicoglu's own pick in The San Francisco Standard's panel of restaurant professionals is Cotogna, in Jackson Square.8
- Where: 349 Clement Street, in the Inner Richmond.
Verdict
should-visit — Let the kitchen send the seafood.