Why you should experience Bosphorus Hasan in Tokyo, Japan.
Bosphorus Hasan is a deeply rooted Turkish restaurant where Shinjuku's international character, Hasan Ünal's Black Sea heritage, halal cooking and Ottoman culinary traditions carry more than three decades of Turkish food culture into Central Tokyo.
Set along Shinjuku-dori near Shinjuku Gyoen and just steps from Taiso-ji Temple, the restaurant places a compact dining room between Shinjuku-Gyoemmae and Shinjuku-sanchome, filling the space with Turkish tilework, lamps and decorative objects. Meze, kebabs, pide and stews move through vegetables, lamb, beef, olive oil, spices and yogurt, giving the table a much broader range than the döner cooking most familiar outside Turkey. Bosphorus Yogurt Kebab brings several of those elements together through lamb, eggplant, tomato, peppers, herbs and a salted yogurt sauce finished with spiced butter. The result is a Shinjuku restaurant where Hasan Ünal's long commitment to Turkish cooking survives through dishes developed around the techniques and flavors he brought to Japan in the 1980s.
What you should know about Bosphorus Hasan.
Bosphorus Hasan is best known for growing from Hasan Ünal's pioneering work during the formative years of Turkish restaurant culture in Japan. Ünal, born in Turkey's Black Sea region, arrived in Japan in 1987 after restaurant experience in his home country and spent five years cooking at Japan's first Turkish restaurant. He opened Bosphorus Hasan independently in Shinjuku in March 1993, naming the restaurant after the Bosphorus with the idea of creating a bridge between Turkey and Japan. Turkish food remained unfamiliar to many Tokyo diners at the time, and Ünal spent the difficult opening months personally explaining the cuisine before wider attention brought a larger audience during the restaurant's first year. The operation expanded in 2008 with further locations in Ichigaya and Shinjuku 2-chome, carrying the original cooking into a small Tokyo restaurant group. Ünal later retired and the business passed to the next generation, with his daughter Riza and her husband Sibel continuing the family operation. More than three decades after the 1993 debut, the Bosphorus Hasan name remains attached to Turkish cooking in Tokyo through the family that introduced it.
Bosphorus Yogurt Kebab builds one of the kitchen's most distinctive plates from lamb leg sautéed with onion, peppers, garlic, tomato, basil, parsley, cumin and Turkish chile before fried eggplant joins the pan. Yogurt sauce then cools the tomato and spice beneath oregano and melted seasoned butter, placing a staple of Turkish cooking directly against the richness of lamb. Meze broadens the opening of a meal through hummus and vegetable-based pastes with freshly baked bread, establishing legumes, olive oil and vegetables before grilled meat arrives. Iwashi pilaf reaches toward Turkey's Black Sea coast through sardines and rice, connecting the menu directly with the region where Ünal was born. Raki and Turkish wine extend the meal through two drinking traditions with long histories in Anatolia, giving the kitchen's yogurt, lamb, vegetables and spice natural counterparts at the table.
How to fold Bosphorus Hasan into your trip.
Bosphorus Hasan works as the dining destination within a Shinjuku route connecting Edo-period temple history, among Tokyo's surviving yose theaters and the imperial garden whose grounds passed through daimyo estate, agricultural experimentation and royal ownership.
Begin at Taiso-ji Temple, whose history reaches into the late sixteenth century before the Tokugawa government established Shinjuku as a post town on the Koshu Kaido. The temple became closely associated with Naito-Shinjuku and preserves religious sculpture including an Edo-period Enma figure, giving the surrounding commercial district a surviving connection with the settlement that preceded modern Shinjuku. Continue to Shinjuku Suehirotei, established in 1897 and rebuilt in 1946 after wartime destruction, where rakugo remains central to a yose program also encompassing manzai, magic and other traditional variety arts. The present wooden theater preserves tatami-side seating and a compact auditorium only a few streets from the department stores surrounding Shinjuku-sanchome. Conclude at Shinjuku Gyoen, developed from land granted to the Naito family during the Edo period before the Meiji government created an agricultural experiment station there in 1872. The grounds became an imperial garden in 1906 under a design associated with French landscape specialist Henry Martinet, then opened as a national garden in 1949. Bosphorus Hasan completes the progression nearby through another chapter in Shinjuku's international history, returning to the restaurant family Hasan Ünal established in 1993 after arriving from Turkey six years earlier.
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