Kardens

About Kardens

Kardens, short for Karadeniz Sofrası ("Black Sea table"), is a family-run restaurant on İzmir 2 Caddesi in Kızılay that brings the home cooking of Rize and Trabzon to the capital. Its tagline is "Karadeniz'i Ankara'da yaşayın", experience the Black Sea in Ankara. The restaurant's website tells the story of its founder, Bahattin Albayrak, who was born in 1960 in a village in Derepazarı, Rize. He trained in theology, worked for years as a teacher and school principal in Trabzon, and left teaching in 1997 to go into business, first packaging and selling tea and then running two restaurants on the coast at Faroz in Trabzon. Kardens opened at its present Kızılay address in 2009 as a family business, with the stated aim of giving people from the region living in the capital, and everyone else, a taste of "green Rize and blue Trabzon". The menu is organised into regional dishes, Black Sea pide, grills, fish and desserts, and the dishes photographed on the restaurant's own site include mıhlama (the region's melted-cheese and cornmeal dish), hamsi tava (fried anchovies), mezgit, Laz böreği, Akçaabat köfte, kavurma and kıymalı pide, lahana sarması, İspir dry beans and baked rice pudding. The restaurant also sells regional products, and it posts its current daily menu on its website, where the latest one is dated October 2026. The restaurant takes phone and takeaway orders on +90 312 419 97 33. It is in the grid of streets just off Gazi Mustafa Kemal Bulvarı, a few minutes on foot from Kızılay Square.