Mehmet Gürs

December 13, 1969 — Ekenäs, Finland

Mehmet Gürs (born 13 December 1969) is a Turkish celebrity chef, television personality and restaurateur. He is considered to be Istanbul's most recognizable chef. Gürs was born in Finland to a Turkish father and a Finnish-Swedish mother and grew up in Stockholm and Istanbul. He spent eight years training and working as a chef in the United States; from 1990 to 1993 he studied Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management at Johnson & Wales University. In the mid 1990s, he returned to Turkey to start his first restaurant called Downtown; six years later he opened Lokanta and then Mikla in 2005. Gürs's Istanbul Food & Beverage Group now consists of Mikla, the numnum café & restaurant, Trattoria Enzo, Kronotrop, Terra Kitchen chain and the group's research lab, the workshop.