Japanese lunch café Taigu now serves matcha and patisserie at Ceintuurbaan 246, and on Fridays and Saturdays its chefs cook fish dishes at a stone bar.
The building once housed Kilim, the Turkish restaurant run by the father of singer Karsu Dönmez, who performed there from a young age.
She has called it a true family business, with her father as owner, her uncle as manager and her sister, cousins and other relatives waiting tables.
In her cookbook Karsu’s Kitchen, which has sold more than 50,000 copies, she recalls playing the piano there every weekend as a teenager.
At 16 she won a scholarship to the University of Rhode Island, and a year later she performed at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Her career took off after she appeared on the TV programme De Wereld Draait Door, where presenter Matthijs van Nieuwkerk mentioned Kilim and reservations poured in.
Karsu said in 2017 that the restaurant was suddenly always full, though her father, who was always working, had not even heard of the programme.
Until Kilim closed in 2019, a photo of her hung by the door.
If her story has you hungry, here’s where to eat Turkish food in Amsterdam.
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