Our Gastronomy and Culinary Arts graduate, Selen Mağzalcıoğlu, whose interviews have been featured in the national press and continues to be the subject of columns, was awarded the 'Gourmand Table Chef Restaurant' award at the beginning of 2024 for her reinterpretation of Syriac flavors in her restaurant.
Selen Mağzalcıoğlu was born into a family where cooking is passed down as a genetic inheritance.'We are from Mardin. Everyone in our family cooks very well anyway. Cooking is learned from childhood and is a part of life' says Mağzalcıoğlu, who has been a child who loves to prepare different presentations besides cooking. The founder and chef of the restaurant, which aims to introduce Mesopotamian cuisine, Selen Mağzalcıoğlu, answered the questions of Hürriyet Newspaper columnist Ece Çelik.
ENTERED THE KITCHEN IN HIGH SCHOOL
Mağzalcıoğlu completed her high school education at Saint Benoit French High School. Although she started to receive cooking training during the summer months while still in high school, at that time her family was not very enthusiastic about her becoming a chef. When Mağzalcıoğlu, who was
accepted to both Sorbonne University and Koç University, entered Yeditepe Gastronomy Department with a full scholarship through a talent exam, his family began to support her passion for cooking:
INTERNSHIP AT A CHOCOLATE SHOP
'I had set my mind on becoming a chef. I completed the five-year school in three years. I continued to receive training abroad and domestically during the summers. After completing university, I specialized in pastry at the French Culinary Arts school in New York. I interned at the famous chef
Jacques Torres' chocolate shop. After returning to Turkey with this knowledge, I opened a small chocolate and coffee workshop. I started selling chocolate and cardamom-flavored Syriac coffee abroad. There was intense demand from Arab countries.'
REGIONAL FLAVORS
Although she specialized in chocolate, Mağzalcıoğlu, who had the idea of opening a restaurant where she could make Mesopotamian flavors, had a hotel enter his life with his father at just this time 'My father is a good filigree master, a jeweler. When a building they were doing business in became vacant, he decided to turn it into a hotel and we started running it together. During those times, I was dealing with both chocolate and coffee business and the hotel. But my real dream was to open a restaurant. When my family embraced this idea warmly, I rolled up my sleeves to open 7 Mila. 7 is both because of Turkey's 7 regions and personally my lucky number. Mila is the name of my nephew. We set out with the idea of how we can make Mesopotamian cuisine loved and modernized.
Actually, we aimed to reach tourists. We offer dishes from Mardin, Hatay, and Urfa. We use flavors we bring from the region."
SYRIAN DISHES FROM MEYME
Mağzalcıoğlu, who says she received support from both his grandmothers for Syrian dishes in Mardin, sometimes talks about surprising guests by bringing them into the kitchen and offering them unexpected flavors not on the menu: "Meyme means grandmother to us. Our dessert plate is called Meyme. We present the desserts my grandmother made for us in a wooden box made from olive wood in Mardin. With this presentation, I actually tell the guests about my grandmother. This makes me very happy."
THE GRAND PRIZE OF GASTRONOMY
Mağzalcıoğlu, who explains that foreign guests especially love Şam böreği (Syrian pastry) and beef cheek, states that their modernized içli köfte (stuffed meatballs) sells out. Mağzalcıoğlu, who says that the Gault&Millau award they received within just one year of opening was very valuable to them, says, , "We won one of the two big awards in the world of gastronomy. It's something to be very proud of, of course. To be evaluated for a Michelin Star, it was necessary to complete one year. We did not enter the evaluation this year, but I believe that in the coming years, we will also be deemed worthy of a Michelin Star."