Our Story
The Same Family, a New Table
Süzgeç is the door an old Bodrum taverna family opened onto Italian cooking. It lifted its shutters on Müskebi Street in Ortakent in May 2025, and the promise made at the opening was plain: the same care at the same fair prices the family's earlier tables were known for. That is why Süzgeç never felt like a place starting from zero — a long habit of hosting stood behind it. Only the language of the kitchen had changed.
Bringing Italy to Ortakent
Everything here turns around the wood fire. The dough goes through a long, multi-day fermentation, then bakes Neapolitan-style in seconds at high heat: puffed and light at the rim, thin at the centre. Around it come the pastas, the layered dishes out of the oven, and a handful of unfussy starters. One guest summed up the whole intention in a single line — they brought Italy to Ortakent. That is exactly what the national press noticed too: the pillowy lightness of the pizza and the seriousness of the pasta.
The Garden Behind the Wall
From the street it is a plain façade; through the door it is somewhere else entirely. The courtyard guests call the "secret garden" in their reviews becomes the real dining room once the evening light arrives. On some nights jazz slips in and the tables stretch out longer. Süzgeç was not opened as a summer whim: the door stays open twelve months a year, and the same oven burns through the winter.
The Ground Beneath Müskebi
Until the 1960s Ortakent went by the name Müskebi — muscat vineyards, mandarin groves and a bergamot scent that still hasn't left. Beneath this ground lies Anatolia's largest Mycenaean cemetery: some fifty chamber tombs dating to the 15th century BC. So while you are having dinner in the Süzgeç garden, the traces of a 3,500-year-old civilisation sit under your feet. Some of the village's calm, and some of the table's unhurriedness, comes from exactly there.