Join Our Culinary Gatherings
Join us for our Culinary Gatherings
CULINARY EVENTS ARE CANCELLED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Celebrating diversity in the rich anatolian cuisine
We feel that understanding and sharing culture through our rich cuisine is an inclusive and a beautiful process. Once a month we gather around and learn from a culinary expert from our community how to cook traditional dishes from different regions and ethnicities in Anatolia. After cooking together, we sit around a table and enjoy the delicious meal with lovely company. Classes are taught in English.
All our culinary gatherings are created by our board member Yeşim Erim and held at the professional kitchen of Bauman College in Berkeley.
The dates of our upcoming 2019/2020 Culinary Gatherings are as follows:
June 2nd, 2019 - Instructor Işıl Arıcan. This event is sold out.
August 11th, 2019 - Instructor Işıl Arıcan. This event is sold out.
October 6th, 2019- Instructor Nur Sağlam. This event is sold out.
November 3rd, 2019 - Instructor Nur Sağlam. This event is sold out.
January 12th, 2019 - Instructor Işıl Arıcan. This event is sold out.
March 15th, 2019 - Instructor Nur Sağlam. Cancelled due to Shelter-in-place.
April 26th, 2019- Instructor Işıl Arıcan. Cancelled due to Shelter-in-place.
PLEASE NOTE THAT No new Culinary GATHERINGS are scheduled. we will be updating our CALENDAR IF THERE ARE ANY CHANGES AND WHEN WE BEGIN OUR GATHERINGS SAFELY.
WE MISS YOU!
Seats for these events are limited, if you would like to join us, you can sign up for the next culinary gathering. Check our events page for more details.
CULINARY PROGRAM CREATOR:
YEŞİM ERİM
Born and raised in Turkey, Yeşim lived in Istanbul until she was 24 years old. She has been passionate about food and cooking since middle school and always preferred experiences over possessions. She calls Berkeley home since 1999. While living and raising her two boys in Berkeley, she started to appreciate the beauty and the power of diversity. Yeşim believes that connecting people of diverse backgrounds through meaningful experiences can make the world a better place and strives to create such opportunities by uniting people through cooking, dancing, and other forms of art.
MEET OUR COOKING INSTRUCTORS:
IŞIL ARICAN
Işıl was born and raised in Turkey, and settled down in Bay Area in 2008. She grew up in a family where all family would gather to cook and eat fresh seasonal foods, a lot of vegetables and fish. She was interested in cooking since she was 12, watched her mom, dad, and grandmother cook traditional Turkish/ Mediterranean recipes, and later started to replicate them. Today she loves to cook both her heirloom recipes and learn cooking the variety of cuisines Bay Area offers.
Işıl was trained as an MD in Turkey and works in the Healthcare Informatics field. In her free time, she experiments cooking different recipes, brews beer, grows vegetables, writes popular science and critical thinking articles, plays desktop RPGs and computer games.
NUR SAĞLAM
Nur Sağlam is a real estate professional, serving the Bay Area since 2003. Before becoming a real estate agent, Nur worked as a software engineer at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, Nur's culinary journey started long before she moved to the U.S. Her love of cooking has its roots in the motherland of Turks: Anatolia. She was raised and influenced by the cuisine of two different parts of Anatolia - the Black Sea Coast and Istanbul.
Nur loves cooking delicious and nutritious Mediterranean food and sharing her culture. She is very excited to share the art of Anatolian Cuisine with her Bay Area community and is looking forward to meeting other food enthusiasts. Her menu is especially unique in combining modern Mediterranean flavors with traditional Turkish cooking styles.