Meze By Lemon Tree

Wow! Fabulous food and service in an elegantly intimate setting. We opted for the Degustation, which began with five mezze: a creamy ball of paprika covered cheese with walnuts, thinly sliced silky beef in pesto, a wonderfully tangy ceviche of sea bass, mildly spicy cheesed stuffed peppers, and amazingly fresh breaded calamari strips. The main courses were tasty lamb chops and sea bass wrapped in paper and stuffed with dried apricots, pistachios, and strawberry (?). Ali noticed that I was not eating my scoop of potato salad, being something of a potato salad snob. However, when I tried it I found it was infused with coconut and olive oil. Spectacular! Dessert was a heavenly creamy pudding concoction topped with chocolate and slivered hazel nuts. Ali’s attentive service complemented and elevated our dining experience. The rave reviews here and elsewhere are well deserved. Fabulous! Efsane!

Loved our dinner experience here! We started with some cold meze plates, specifically the smoked salmon with ginger and carrots, and the seabass ceviche. Both were delightful and very fresh. For our entrees we got the whole octopus and the seabass. The octopus was some of the best grilled octopus I’ve ever had! The flavor was perfect, and it was extremely tender and paired so well with the onions and greens. For some reason, the were very few other customers when we went, but it was a nice and quiet meal.

I just returned from Istanbul and this was one of the most delicious meals that I had. I wouldn’t describe it as typical Turkish cuisine… but I’m no expert. The meze was fantastic and the staff wonderful.

This place is fantastic and I highly recommend that you try.
Every one of their delicious meze dishes shone. It’s a lovely bright laid out place. I can’t say enough good things about this restaurant we were really impressed.
Just excellent. Pretty much one of if not my favorite restaurant on Istanbul.

This was my favorite restaurant in Istanbul. We opted to to the four course meal: 5 shared cold meze, one shared warm appetizer, an entrée and dessert. We enjoyed every dish. The meze course in itself was a full meal, so come hungry!
At the start of the meal the waiter will bring you to the glass case filled of cold meze and explain each one to you… so hard to pick! The tabouli, and radish/​sea bass ceviche were my favorite meze dishes, but all were unique and actually tasted much better than they looked in the case. Our shared warm appetizer was a shrimp casserole. It was slightly creamy and cooked just right. I definitely recommend this one. For the main course my husband had beef slices with yogurt over potatoes. The meat was so tender and tasty but there was a bit too much yogurt for my taste making it really heavy. My dish was the sea bass with almonds and apricots. I’ve never had sea bad prepared this way and I loved the balance of flavors. Both of our dishes were very sizeable and I was sad I couldn’t manage to finish this course. We had the pudding for dessert. Very tasty, but I was too full at this point to fully enjoy more than a few bites!
This meal came at a pleasant, relaxed pace. We made a reservation only one day ahead and were told they could squeeze us in from 7−9pm. This felt like just enough time. I would allow 2.5 hours in your schedule just in case, but definitely reserve ahead of time. The tables were a bit close together, but our neighbors were very friendly.
Definitely make time to try this place out when you are in town!

The food is VERY tasty and the service is spot-​on. We did find it lacking in experience though.
While this is somewhere I would bring my mother, it wasn’t for us. We found most people in the restaurant were tourists. The couple seated next to us was from the same neighborhood in the US as us. The whole experience was like eating at a Turkish restaurant in our neighborhood at home.

Delicious traditional Turkish mezes with a twist an unexpected flavors in so. Stuffed peppers were to die for. Aubergine phyllo twist was impeccable. Definitely need a reservation; we saw people turned away and it was full within 30 mins after opening. Owner was incredibly welcoming and friends who chose the mezes said staff were very helpful. Service was impeccable.

The best meal I had in Istanbul hands down, impeccable service, amazing food will be on my list here.

Wonderful service and food. A must when you visit istanbul.

In anticipation of our trip to Istanbul, we were quite excited about Meze by Lemon Tree, given the reviews we read on Unilocal,Tripadvisor, and various travel books. This was our first dinner in Istanbul. Although the food at Meze by Lemon Tree was good, it was not great.
The restaurant itself is lovely. A small, modern-​looking restaurant across from the Pera Palace (if you are taking a taxi to the restaurant, we recommend telling the taxi driver you are going to the Pera Palace hotel), the service was friendly and helpful. Definitely make a reservation — we saw numerous parties get turned away at the door because of lack of reservations.
Although the restaurant is called «meze», there are a number of larger, main dishes on the menu. For us, the main dishes were fine, but we would recommend focusing on the restaurant’s meze options.

We enjoyed a lovely evening at Meze by Lemon tree. For two people we ordered six meze which is plenty. I suggest focusing on the Mezes when visiting this restaurant. The servers were very kind and helpful.
This recommendation was written by Katrin S. If you enjoyed my recommendation, I’d appreciate a «helpful» or «cool» given.

Nice restaurant with reasonable prices. Most of the dishes were ok BUT there was one outstanding dish that needs to be applauded. The pan roasted beef slices, fried shredded potatoes with yogurt and tomato sauce was absolutely delicious. If you go to Istanbul, come here and only order this dish.

This is the best food I’ve had in Turkey. Subtle updates to traditional foods plus a cozy atmosphere make this place unforgettable.

Delicious food & the most attentive service!

Favorite restaurant in the city! Good service and amazing food