Ebru Baybara Demir: the Mardin chef who won the Basque Culinary World Prize

November 9, 2026November 9, 2026
Turkish Chefs

Ebru Baybara Demir is a chef and social entrepreneur from Mardin, a border province in south-eastern Turkey. In 2023 she won the Basque Culinary World Prize, the award often called the “Nobel of gastronomy”, becoming the first Turkish woman chef to take it (Daily Sabah). The prize recognised her contribution to cultural integration, social development and biodiversity.

She calls what she does social gastronomy. “My job is to touch people’s lives as much as the taste of the plate I make,” she told Food Tank, and “gastronomy is not only cooking in the kitchen.” Over more than two decades that has meant restaurants staffed by local women, cookery training for Syrian refugees and Turkish women, the revival of an ancient local wheat and, after the February 2023 earthquakes, a soup kitchen in Hatay. For anyone interested in where Turkish food comes from – the soil, the grain and the people who cook it – her work is the place to start.

Early life and career

Demir was born in Mardin in 1976 and graduated in tourism from Marmara University in Istanbul in 1999 (Wikipedia), where she studied tourism guiding. That year she settled in Mardin with the aim of bringing tourism to the city (Lezzet), and in 2001 she opened her first restaurant, Cercis Murat Konağı, together with 21 women. Lezzet describes it as the city’s first tourism business.

The restaurant went on to train women in traditional cooking, and her projects have since taken her work across south-eastern Turkey and onto international stages, from the UN World Tourism Organization’s World Forum on Gastronomy Tourism, where she represented Turkey, to the Food on the Edge summit in Ireland (NTV).

Restaurants

Cercis Murat Konağı, Mardin

Konak means mansion, and Cercis Murat Konağı is Demir’s first and best-known restaurant. By 2021 it had been open for more than 20 years and had trained nearly 200 women in traditional Turkish cooking. It cooks traditional local recipes using ingredients from 170 local farmers (Food Tank), with a focus on Anatolian cuisine (Wikipedia).

Zamarot 1890, Mardin

Her second Mardin restaurant, Zamarot 1890, is described in her speaker profile as the region’s first zero-waste and “sixth sense” restaurant (Speaker Agency). Lezzet adds that every dish served there is made from local produce.

Cooking style and signature dishes

Demir’s cooking starts in the field. Rather than one signature plate, she is known for the ingredients and the people behind them: local farmers, regional recipes and grains that had almost disappeared. Her guiding line, as her speaker profile puts it: “The taste of the meal on the table comes from the soil it takes and from the lives it benefits.”

Sorgül wheat

One of her best-known projects revived Sorgül, described as Mesopotamia’s oldest wheat (Wikipedia). Food Tank reported in 2021 that her Living Soil, Local Seed project, started in 2017, employed 350 women farmers to grow it without fertiliser, irrigation or power.

Training refugees and local women

She was one of the principal educators on the Harran gastronomy project, which trained 160 people, mainly Syrian and Turkish women; 108 of them were then hired to cook in refugee camps and other facilities (Basque Culinary World Prize). Food Tank describes the Harran Gastronomy School as set up with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. A later programme, Kitchen of Hope, funded by the World Food Programme and aimed at Turkish and Syrian women, taught cookery to 348 students in nine Turkish cities over two years (Food Tank).

From Soil to Plate

She co-founded the From Soil to Plate (Topraktan Tabağa) agricultural development cooperative which, working with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, teaches skills such as baking, farming, mushroom growing, soap-making and bee conservation (Food Tank). Its volunteers promote local, ancestral grains such as Sorgül and make soaps, jams and handicrafts that are sold online (Basque Culinary World Prize). A related scheme, From Soil to Soil, which began in Diyarbakır, turns fruit and vegetable waste from markets into compost and sends usable food to soup kitchens for preserves and hot meals (Speaker Agency); under the slogan Yaşamı İyileştiriyoruz (“We are improving life”) it has spread to many other provinces. After the February 2023 earthquakes she ran a soup kitchen in Hatay, which had been going for more than 100 days when she won the Basque prize (Middle East Monitor).

Awards and recognition

2001: Turkey’s Successful Woman Award from the newspaper Dünya (Lezzet).
2017 and 2018: top-ten finalist for the Basque Culinary World Prize, first with the Harran gastronomy school project and then with From Soil to Plate – the first Turkish chef to reach the final ten (Lezzet).
2022: a special award for those who inspired others during the pandemic, at the third Altın Kaşık (Golden Spoon) Awards of the Mutfak Dostları Derneği (Lezzet).
2023: winner of the Basque Culinary World Prize, chosen from 800 nominations from 42 countries. The prize gives the winner €100,000 for a project of their choice (Daily Sabah).
2023: Aenne Burda Creative Leadership Award, presented at the DLD conference in Munich (Speaker Agency).
2024: named a World Food Hero by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, according to her speaker profile.

Books, TV and online

In 2022 HBO Max chose her as one of 12 zero-waste chefs from around the world for a documentary (Lezzet). She has also appeared as a guest on episode 169 of MasterChef, according to NTV.

Watch

Ebru Baybara Demir introduces her work in this short film from the Basque Culinary World Prize, made when she was a 2018 finalist.

Video: Ebru Baybara Demir, BCWP Finalist 2018. – Basque Culinary World Prize (YouTube)

Where to eat food like this in London

London has no Mardin restaurant of hers, but our regional Anatolian restaurants and lokanta-style home-cooking spots are the closest thing. Our guide to popular Turkish dishes explains the basics, and you can cook with wheat and bulgur the way south-eastern kitchens do with our kısır (bulgur salad), mercimek köftesi (lentil and bulgur patties) or ezogelin soup.

See all 9 Regional Anatolian places in London

Quick facts

Born: 1976, Mardin, Turkey
Based in: Mardin
Studied: tourism guiding, Marmara University
Restaurants: Cercis Murat Konağı (opened 2001) and Zamarot 1890, Mardin
Known for: social gastronomy, the Sorgül wheat revival and the From Soil to Plate cooperative
Award: Basque Culinary World Prize 2023

Turkish Food Blog

Ebru Baybara Demir: the Mardin chef who won the Basque Culinary World Prize

Early life and career