"The fundamental experience that unites us across all cultures is sharing food," says Sayat Ozyilmaz, the co-owner and co-chef of Wine Spectator Award of Excellence winner Dalida in San Francisco. "It's a way of connecting. In this era of lost connections, I think one of the biggest opportunities in our society is to connect with other human beings. And restaurants are here to celebrate that."
Sayat and his wife, Dalida co-owner and co-chef Laura Ozyilmaz, have made breaking bread the motivating principle at their restaurant, where they provide warm hospitality, share stories of where their food and wine come from and create lasting memories for diners. Located in the Presidio of San Francisco, Dalida debuted in June 2023 as a celebration of the eastern Mediterranean's rich culinary traditions and food, and it’s among 2024’s many first-time Restaurant Award recipients.
Sayat, originally from Istanbul, and Laura, originally from Mexico, have spent time working at some of the world’s best-known restaurants, including Grand Award winners Le Bernardin, Eleven Madison Park and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York, and Saison in San Francisco. Laura was also recently a contestant on the 21st season of Bravo TV series Top Chef, where she made it to the final four.
A Shareable Mediterranean Spread
At Dalida, the duo offers a broadly eastern Mediterranean menu inspired by their journeys and adapted to local, seasonal produce. The results are refined dishes without pretense, including organic and minimalistic, yet still artful, presentations, all sharing a common thread of shareability.
Diners can easily use their fingers to enjoy dishes like the oysters Suleyman—grilled and served with pork sujuk (a fermented sausage), chives and lemon—and Istanbul-style stuffed mussels with currants and dill. Middle Eastern pasta dishes are shared as well, including servings of manti, a dumpling filled with butter-roasted lamb, served in tomato sauce and topped with garlic yogurt. There’s also the aptly dubbed "Breaking Bread” mezze spread of hummus, muhammara, smoked yogurt, pickles and marinated olives served with pita. It’s the epitome of the center plate, a fundamental part of Turkish dining.
Among the large, shareable entrees is a take on lamb lollipops made using a culinary technique from Cyprus, in which meat (traditionally skewered kebabs) is wrapped in caul fat. Here, the lamb chops are encased in ground lamb and served with hummus, lamb jus and chives. Laura says covering lamb chops with caul fat and ground meat is not necessarily traditional or expected in California; instead, it speaks to her experience as an outsider looking at Sayat's food culture through a different lens.
Exploring All Corners of the Wine World
Wine director Ruth Frey admits she didn't have a strong knowledge of eastern Mediterranean wines when she began curating the list of 400-plus selections. "When you come up through the Court of Master Sommeliers [educational organization] or work in fine-dining restaurants, the boundaries of the ‘classic’ wines of the world are clearly defined," she explains.
Nevertheless, she leaned in. Frey organized the list geographically and with a focus on family-operated wineries; it starts in Armenia and works its way west to Oregon. She's not trying to put wines from, say, Spain, Portugal or California in the back seat though: "It's to try and get people to broaden their perspective of how much incredible wine is out there.”
The list is not without well-known European and U.S. regions like Burgundy, Tuscany and California, or prized bottlings such as Giuseppe Mascarello Barolos and Jean-Baptiste Boudier Corton-Charlemagne. These sit alongside selections from Greece’s Domaine Sigalas (an Assyrtiko, for example) and Lebanon’s Chateau Musar, among other wineries, offering guests exciting regional examples that naturally fuse with the cuisine at Dalida. "I'm exploring and learning alongside [the guests],” Frey observes. “It comes down to our ability to talk about these wines in a way that builds a connection to the place, the food and the experience.”
