Editor’s note: We regret to report that Hamov has closed.
Around lunchtime, the phone at Hamov never stops ringing. The little pink delivery scooter and its tireless driver stay in perpetual motion in order to feed a neighborhood full of loyal customers good, home-style lunches where they seem to prefer it – in their homes. But Hamov is not just a delivery place; its small dining room fills up quickly, so we suggest arriving on the early side of the lunch rush to get the most out of Hamov.
Most Hamov regulars seem to opt for the daily specials, which on one visit included an excellent green lentil soup, fried zucchini fritters (mücver) and fresh green beans with little shreds of lamb for flavoring. To sum up Hamov merely as an excellent restaurant serving ev yemekleri, or typical home cooking, however, would be true but a vast underestimation of the place.
Hamov is run by a local Armenian mother-and-daughter team who prepare a number of lesser-known specialties alongside the usual lunch suspects. Although we are hesitant to assign ethnicity to any food we encounter in Turkey, certain Anatolian oddities seem to emerge only when there is an Armenian in the kitchen. If not for their ethnic origin, we relish the chance to sample these specialties because they are so rarely served in Istanbul restaurants.
Topik, a great mound of tahini stuffed with chopped onions and mashed chickpeas, is a notch on the bedpost of any culinary adventurer. We’d previously only seen it at a few traditional meyhanes in Istanbul. The topik at Hamov – which looks like a Cinnabon and has the pleasant mouth-coating smack of sesame paste – holds its own against any in town. (But be forewarned: topik is generally only available with advance notice, so call ahead.)
After a full lunch and the topik, we asked our waitress what other specialties were on offer. She seemed to size us up with a glance: “Do you eat organs?” “Yes,” we confirmed, and she insisted we try the dalak dolması, stuffed spleen. We were expecting something resembling mumbar, the Gaziantep-style intestine stuffed with rice and boiled like bratwurst; rather limp and lacking the low notes that organ meat usually delivers, mumbar has never been one of our favorites.
Luckily, Hamov’s stuffed spleen reminded us nothing of mumbar. Slices of the stuffed spleen were battered and fried in a way that recalled kadınbudu köfte. As we took our first bite, a certain sense of guilt accompanied the rich blast of the organ, which was gently flavored with cinnamon and mint. We weren’t sure that we should be eating spleen, but we liked it.
As we finished our meal, a hefty woman, her faced flushed from working in the hot kitchen, peered out of the back to see who had ordered both topik and dalak dolması. Perhaps she was expecting to see someone from the choir at her church, but she appeared no less gracious upon finding two new converts to the Armenian kitchen smiling back at her. “Ellerine sağlık,” we said, blessing her hands. “Afiyet olsun,” she said in response, wishing us good health. Though we’re not so sure about the health benefits of our lunch, it was certainly true to its name: In Armenian, Hamov means “delicious.”
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