If you’re one of those people who take care of the food and try to do something at home, we don’t know if it’s possible that you haven’t heard of Cafe Fernando.. Even if you haven’t discovered it, it’s proven to have been discovered by the world.. Because Cafe Fernando, one of the “World’s 50 Best Food Blogs”, won dozens of ambitious awards such as the “Best Original Dessert Recipe of the Year” with the brownie it designed for Dolce & Gabbana, and it is taking firm steps forward in its own way.
Of course, don’t look at what we said above, because what will impress you about Cenk Sönmezsoy is not the awards or how much his book sells; how passionately he is doing this job. We are talking about the kind of passion that he will leave his career behind, that he will try to make an apple pie 20 times if necessary in order to eat the “best apple pie”, and at the end of all this he can say that his only problem is to eat something good.. Not from “roast the onions until pink” books, but from the kind of passion with soulful cooking stories that will give you huge reasons to cook.. “Are we going to think about three meals a day?” Not to mention the fact that it has turned people who have anxiety into making all kinds of cakes/cakes every week, turning them into a small phenomenon among our friend groups.
Without further ado, last week within the scope of Istanbul Coffee Festival > After the Ilham Atelier, which we attended as the guest of Caffe Nero, let’s move on to the very candid interview with Cenk Sönmezsoy, which was like a blogging 101 for us and inspired us.
Exactly. We had the chance to meet you at a time when you started to have a great impact on our lives, when we started praising Cafe Fernando on the right and left.. Therefore, we wouldn’t be wrong if we say that we have a good command of your life.. But for those who do not know or are wondering, we will not be able to start with this cliché, how did your cooking adventure begin?
Actually, I started cooking in Bilkent.. Until that day, everything was in front of me, my mother cooked it and put it in front of me, my father sliced fruit and gave it to me while watching TV, it was proceeding in a way that I could not appreciate when I was young.. However, after I won Bilkent and started to stay in the dormitory, I realized that the only place I could eat at was the pide shop behind the dormitory, a completely different process started for me.. Starting with the logic of “I have to think about this issue for 3 meals” like you, I almost ate for a living! Of course, when I went to San Francisco and started trying things that I had never eaten or tried before, I started to gain a different perspective.
As we understand it, San Francisco has had a huge impact on your life..
I can say that I never cooked when I lived in San Francisco. First of all, the city has such a beauty, you can have 3 meals outside with a student budget.. There are many varieties and a very wide price range.. For example, while we were working there, we were eating buffets at an Indian restaurant for $4.99.. Well, when the situation is like this, I said, “Why should I cook? I was thinking. Because for me, cooking is something I do primarily to fill my stomach.. I care about it very much, but if I can find beautiful things outside, I can choose not to try at all.. Things changed at this point anyway, when I returned to Turkey and couldn’t find what I used to eat in San Francisco, I started to cook my own meals.
When I looked at the recipes, I went beyond cooking for necessity after I returned to Turkey Would we be wrong to say that you are engaged in some more arduous work? We don’t know if it’s because of our amateur ways, but you have many recipes that take a lot of time or effort.
It didn’t matter to me when I just started cooking.. If I want to eat something, it doesn’t matter to me whether it takes 10 days or 1 hour.. My stomach is ruling me! If I think I need to eat x, I will do everything I can for it.. Yes, maybe I may not get great results the first time I do it, but I somehow manage to get results that will eventually reach what I want to eat.. For example, if I’m going to eat an apple pie, it must be the best I can eat, otherwise what am I trying to do?. As we read, we realized that you often create your recipes by experimenting.. Well, this is “what would happen if I added one more egg?” Does it develop out of curiosity, or is it a different situation?
It cannot be said that it is exactly that way.. Let’s say you decide to add eggs. Why are you adding that egg? In order for me to make such experiments, there must be a problem and I must be producing a solution.. In what we call Baking, you don’t have a chance to interfere after you put something in the oven.. Therefore, the importance of what, how, why and to what extent you do it is very important, making your own decision may not yield very good results.. However, since there is no such thing as applying the recipes to the letter in the genes of the Turkish people, I am sure that unexpected things arise from time to time.
Can we call these attempts as “trying to find the better, the better”?
Actually yes, but still, as I said, I need to have a purpose in this process.. So I decided on my own, “What would happen if I put 4 eggs in this tart instead of 3? ”, mine is not a purposeless quest.. “What would this lemon tart look like if it was more lemony?” or “How can I fit 2 kilos of apples into this cake?
This part is familiar to us.. We remember a highly reproachful chapter in your book about your first apple cake recipe.
Yes! The apple muffins I made didn’t have enough apple flavor for me.. That’s my problem! I want to eat an apple cake and the amount of apples is not enough for me in the recipes I have tried so far.. So how can I put more apples in this cake, I’m trying to figure out ways. I will do it 20 times, I will do it 30 times, it doesn’t matter until I find a solution to this issue.. Yes, I know, it’s a job that requires some patience, but I think it’s all about human nature.. Some people make two and say, “Well, that’s enough, even if I don’t eat it,” they say, but I may have tried everything you can think of while making those recipes you’ve seen today.
Thousands of bloggers may want to reach. Assuming you are at a certain point, how did the beginning of cafefernando.com and how it stood out from all these food blogs?
When I started the blog, namely in 2005, this blog issue was not very popular in Turkey. was not popular. I could count maybe 20 food blogs or something.. Of course, nowadays Blogspot, WordPress etc.. Since we could open a blog in 5 minutes through intermediaries, there may have been 2 million, I don’t know.. After all, it is now something that anyone can easily start with.. When I first started, I didn’t have such big goals.. One day I saw a blog, I liked it very much, it was especially visually appealing to me.. Even though I hadn’t even taken a photo until that day, I started one day when this blog inspired me.
We had a lot of trouble choosing a name for Oitheblog, for example.. Have you had a thinking process that took days too?
I never thought about naming it Cafe Fernando. I didn’t even think about what a misnomer it was.. Today, the first question asked by those who have just heard the name is “Where is this cafe?”. However, I put this name on a sudden decision and because fernando.com has already been taken.. (and, of course, with the influence of the Golden Girls, which I love so much) If I had the mind of today, I wouldn’t have put the word cafe in my head!
I guess this is one of the most unexpected effects of blogs, you never know where it will come to one day.. You name it, you start typing, we’re all right here. So how did you experience your personal big bang?
Maybe luck played a part, but I think it’s mostly about personalization, the fact that I put pieces of myself into the blog.. When you open and look at many cookbooks in Turkey, you will see that they consist of recipes and photographs placed one after the other.. But you can’t see any motivational story or article about why you should make that recipe.. I think I’m different, especially at this point.. I already have so many readers who don’t cook at all, only read the stories I wrote before the recipe, or love my photos.
We can’t help but mention the beauty of your photos.. While we were browsing the book, we studied your fan photos for a long time.. Do you shoot them all?
Of course, I shoot them all myself. As a matter of fact, these are the things that I have learned over time, that I have grasped through experience.. I started to capture better shots as I took them somehow, and now when I look at the photos I took in the first year, I see most of them as things that should be thrown away.
Of course, it’s not enough to just take beautiful photos, the presentations you prepare also contribute to the visuals!
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The image issue has come to such a point for me that sometimes I get up at 5 am to buy a product on Ebay for something that will expire, or I can translate it from a Swedish site via Google Translate. I even got a plate. The seller didn’t speak English, so I don’t speak Swedish either, but I need to get that plate too! I had to resort to desperate Google Translate and it was successful.
Then things progressed and you got an offer on the book? Or did the event progress with your initiatives?
Actually, at one of the meetings of Işıl, who used to work at a publishing house and was also the editor of my book, a comment like “I follow a blog and I like it very much, I wish we could publish his book”. I came with a suggestion.. Then I was invited to a meeting. Up until that point, I thought that there were already thousands of cookbooks in the world, that I had nothing to add, and I was against writing a book, I didn’t think I could handle it.. Of course, this thought was an advanced thing about the cookbooks I saw in America.. But when they said that there is such a need in Turkey, I felt a wolf.. Well, once it started, the rest came, and we published it as soon as I felt comfortable.
By the way, do you plan to translate Cafe Fernando into English?
Yes, I’m working on it right now, but it’s not as easy as it can be imagined, it’s not something that goes like ‘hope, we’ve done it’, of course, there is no such order abroad.. There you first have to prepare an offer, send it to many publishers somehow, and if it is liked, you have to translate the whole book as a result of the agreement.. We are currently at that stage of proposal.
By the way, most people think that I can write very easily, but it takes me a week to write both the English part and my Turkish articles.. Writing naturally is a very difficult task in my opinion.. Especially for people who are obsessive like me.. For example, if I don’t like the first sentence, I can’t move on to the second sentence.
Is there a new book project or workshop-like work on the horizon? Your readers (and we) seem pretty eager to see you more often.
I’d just write a cookbook for the rest of my life and not be involved in any other projects.. But unfortunately, it is very difficult for me to earn my living from this in Turkish conditions.. The book is currently 5. It is going into print and until today, no cookbook in Turkey has sold this much and that fast. However, my 1. with what I earned from the book 2. I can’t start the book. Therefore, although I am very selective, I need to take part in other projects.. Actually, my logic is: Make the money you need, stop, keep writing a book, work again when you run out, stop, then the same process again. I’m officially going this way.
O in our opinion, return to the working process as soon as possible, we felt that it took a long time to write the book, do not deprive us of recipes and stories Please!
This time I’m going crazy and I’m starting to write 5 books at once and whichever ends first will be published.. Of course this will be a very long process.. Moreover, when I started Cafe Fernando, I “thought” that I knew something very well, especially in the field of baking, but when I looked later, I came across a lot of information that I thought could be done wrong or better.. In a sense, I have trained myself during these processes.. So, in this 1-2 year recipe experimentation process, I somehow knead myself, train myself and prepare myself to write that book, then some things start to flow.
Leaving your career behind and stepping into a new field, especially blog In Turkey, where the issue is not taken very seriously, it is really a radical and courageous decision. How did you achieve this? Is it a momentary madness?
Did I succeed, actually, I have to think about it first.. Because I think being successful in this job means actually being able to maintain the living standards you provided with your previous job in your new breakthrough.. Yes, it may seem like I’m doing what I want right now, but I still have to pay my house fees, electricity, do the things everyone else does.. There is another side of this job that people don’t think about.. For example, while I was writing a book, even though I lived alone, my electricity bill was even 500 TL because my oven was on all day.. When I left the corporate life, I actually gave up on a regular salary that is deposited in the bank every month.. But because I am blind to such matters, I did not enter such calculations. Even though I had a lot of difficulties while writing the book, I believe that when you try hard to do a job well, the money issue will somehow follow.
Especially when you are very advanced in your career… Most people think that after you have done an MBA and have worked in corporate places for a long time, you are doing a really daring job.. It’s like suddenly starting a new life.
Speaking for my own life, I consider this part of the job as completely unconscious.. Because in Turkey, if a man’s head is focused on physics and mathematics, he studies engineering, if he says no, he studies business.. At least that was the case in my age group.. Since my head hit the math part, I studied business administration as the “only” alternative in front of me.. What will you do after studying business? You will either go to the military, start working or do an MBA abroad.. Since I didn’t know what to do, I went to the USA and did an MBA.
We know that in your daily life, at least when you are in Istanbul, you do not like to eat out very much.. However, can we get some restaurant suggestions from you that you like to go to and whose food you like while you’re here? For example, do you have a busy life in Karaköy?
It has probably been 9-10 months since you went to Karaköy.. As you said, I don’t eat out much anyway.. When I eat, I prefer places that I love, that I have known for a long time and that I am sure of the quality.. For example, Beyti, Canteen or Karaköy Lokantası which is one of the restaurants where I get the same quality when I go.. I like Çiya on the Anatolian side. Frankly, I haven’t tried enough of the newly opened places to give advice, so I can’t make a clear comment.. The important thing for me is that the place I go to is stable.. So, I can’t put a place that was bad in one visit and successful in the other, into the generalization of the restaurants I like in my head.
As a travel blog, we admire your passion for San Francisco! If you want to give us some suggestions from there, we won’t refuse…
I think you should definitely have a meal at Zuni Cafe on all days you will spend in San Francisco.. Because I ate one of the best things I ate in my life there; Zuni Chicken. Actually, it says on the menu for 2 people, but frankly, I’m finishing it alone.. It’s a roast chicken thing, but I’m sure you’ve never eaten anything like this before in your life.. Speaking of which, if you’re going to eat this chicken, order it as you sit down, because it takes 45 minutes to cook.. I would also recommend you to understand once again how fake what we ate in Turkey by eating a Caesar Salad there.
While we’re talking about it, countries other than San Francisco that you love, miss or admire the cuisine of. /are there any cities?
Definitely Paris. My favorite shop was a chocolate and candy shop called A l’Étoile d’Or. The owner is a woman in her 70s who looks like a teenage girl with side-braided hair and a high school skirt.. Unfortunately, his shop burned down last year and he decided not to open it again, probably due to his age.. When I heard this, I can officially say that the world came crashing down on me, because it was definitely the most beautiful chocolate and confectionery shop I’ve ever seen in my life.
Likewise, if you like macarons or you have not tried them before, you can directly go without visiting their more popular alternatives (you get it). I can recommend you to stop by Pierre Herme. I thought I didn’t like macarons until I ate macarons there. I say don’t go back without trying Mogador, which is especially with passion fruit.
If I’m going to go outside of Europe, it’s Big Sur. Especially the Nepenthe restaurant, put it in a corner of your mind. Although I can’t say that their food is a big feature, I think this place, which emerged with the conversion of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s former home into a restaurant, is magnificent especially in terms of setting and scenery.
Finally, we come with a strange question. , we intend to make sense of your answer in our own way.. Do you think Turkey has a Martha Stewart?
Of course not… But there’s definitely a lot of Rachael Ray.