At the heart of WAYANA, of course, is wine. It didn't take long for us to come to an agreement that tapas should be the main item on the menu that we will serve alongside the wine. As for the recipes of tapas, the main burden was on our chef, who also managed our kitchen during BEPPE. Asuman Chef, who has implemented nearly 120 pizza recipes at BEPPE, used his skill for tapas this time. Of course, along with our supporter, Şafak Chief…

Tapas, by its name, evokes Spanish cuisine. However, we should not forget that there are many applications in our kitchen that we consume on the slice of bread both for breakfast and with appetizers. As you can imagine, we have prepared a tapas menu that is overwhelmingly composed of the flavors of Turkish cuisine, especially the rich cuisine of Istanbul. Of course, there are examples of western cuisines such as caprese, carpaccio, prosciutto and breasola in tapas. But these titles have a smaller percentage.

While dealing with the contents of the tapas, the debate about naming came to the fore. As an alternative to using the original names of our tapas ingredients, we made the names with the influences of the Hittite language. Why Hittite language? Because at the very beginning, we chose the name WAYANA based on the Hittite word for wine. Since the name of the shop is directly related to the Hittite language, we thought it would be meaningful to choose the names of the dishes based on the Hittite language. So, how did we benefit from the Hittite language? Academician, known for his work in this field, Prof. Ahmet Ünal's Hittite-Turkish bidirectional dictionary has become our bedside book. We thank him for his valuable work, shedding light on ancient Anatolian civilizations, and the guidance he has given us. Inspired by the Hittite equivalents of the main ingredients of the recipes in this dictionary, the new words we coined, brought our tapas together with their names.

Key features of our Tapas Menu at WAYANA are:

• Almost everything we serve is produced in our own kitchen. For processed products such as bresaola, bacon, prosciutto, of course we have suppliers. But everything else is prepared in our kitchen.
• We buy all the vegetables we use on a daily basis and process them without waiting.
• We make red meat from our neighboring butcher, where we have been shopping for many years, and fish products from Kadıköy Bazaar on a daily basis.
• The company we have worked with for cheeses has been working only with local producers for many years and only has the best (in our opinion) cheeses.
• We supply our extra virgin olive oil from a local producer in Ayvalık, where we have been working for many years.

As you can see, we stay away from the industrial food channels as much as possible, we are careful to use daily and local produce, and we take pride in our tapas. Although not every tapas appeals to every palate, we have tapas for every palate!

Let's leave wine pairings for another article...