Heritage
Three centuries of stretch, in one Istanbul shop.
Maraş dondurma was born in the foothills of Kahramanmaraş in the early 1700s, when nomadic shepherds discovered that pounding their goat’s milk with snow, salep and a few golden tears of Chios mastic produced a cream so elastic it could hang from a paddle. We are not the first to make it. We are simply trying to make it the way they did.
“If the ice cream doesn’t hang off the paddle for ten seconds, it is not dondurma. It is just cold cream.”
Halil Usta · our founder, on a bad day
The family
Halil & Selin Usta,
third generation.
Halil Usta grew up in his grandfather’s ice-cream shop in Kahramanmaraş — a one-room operation that ran on three things: a brass bowl, a paddle, and a stack of waffle cones with names written on them in pencil. He spent twenty years learning the pound, then he met Selin, a food scientist with a PhD in dairy proteins, and the two of them decided Istanbul deserved to know the real thing.
Maraş opened in Kadıköy in 2014 with five flavors and one wobbly cart. We have three shops now, twelve flavors in rotation, and a team of nine dondurmacılar — but the recipe hasn’t changed. The paddle is the same one Halil’s grandfather used. The bowl is still brass. The pistachios still come from the same orchard outside Gaziantep.
We are not the biggest. We are not the cheapest. We are, on a quiet Tuesday afternoon at 16:00, almost certainly the best ice cream you will eat in this country.
Where it comes from
Born in Kahramanmaraş, sourced from four places we trust.
The recipe began in the high pastures above Kahramanmaraş, where shepherds folded wild salep and a few golden tears of mastic into mountain goat’s milk, pounded it with snow, and found it stretched. Three centuries later we still go to the source — the same highlands, the same single co-ops.
We name our growers because provenance is the whole story. Nothing travels far, nothing waits, and nothing is sourced twice from the same place by accident.
Mountain goat's milk
Keçi sütüA single shepherds' co-op, Taurus Mountains
Naturally richer and sweeter than cow's milk — delivered each dawn.
Wild salep
SalepOne permit-holding co-op, Kahramanmaraş highlands
Hand-milled orchid-root flour, harvested under permit and replanted yearly.
Chios mastic
SakızMastiha growers, island of Chios
Golden resin tears, pine-bright — the second secret to the stretch.
Antep pistachio
Antep FıstığıOne family orchard, outside Gaziantep
Slow-roasted and crushed by hand the same morning it's churned.
Limited & seasonal
The shelf changes when the orchard does.
Alongside our core nine, a small rotating set of seasonal flavors appears only while the fruit is ripe — wild raspberry in high summer, roasted fig in early autumn, sour cherry for the few weeks it lasts. When they’re gone, they’re gone until next year.
Contains milk; made with mastic & salep. May contain traces of tree nuts. Full allergen & nutrition info available in store.
What we won't compromise on
Four rules. No exceptions.
Source single, source kindly
Goat's milk from one Taurus co-op. Pistachios from one Antep grower. Salep from one mountain co-op who replant every year. We know everyone's first name.
Make small, sell out
Twice a day, no leftovers. If you arrive at 22:30 and we're out of pistachio, we'd rather close than serve something we wouldn't eat.
Show your work
The pounding bowl, the paddle, the cut — all done in view of the customer. No reveal, no story.
Respect the show
The teasing routine is older than the recipe. We train every dondurmacı for three months before they ever serve a single cone.
Active since
2014
Kadıköy flagship, since opening day.
Liters churned
0
All by hand, in 4-liter batches.
Suppliers
0
Same eight, every year since we opened.
Honest answers
Things we get asked, often.
What actually makes Maraş dondurma stretchy?+
Two ingredients you won't find in regular gelato: wild salep — flour milled from the tuber of a mountain orchid — and a few golden tears of Chios mastic resin. Pounded with goat's milk in a chilled bowl, they create a long, elastic structure. That's the stretch.
Is salep sustainably sourced?+
Yes. Wild salep is precious and protected, so we only buy from a small co-op in the Taurus mountains who hand-harvest under permit and replant every season. We also offer plant-based salep alternatives in our vegan-leaning flavors.
Will it really not fall off the cone?+
If we hand it to you, you can hold it upside down for a solid 30 seconds. It's not a trick — it's protein structure. Just don't dawdle.
Do you cater weddings and events?+
We do. We bring a brass-trimmed cart, two performers, your choice of six flavors and the whole teasing show. From 30 guests up to 600.
How long does it keep?+
Like a fresh bread — it's at its best the day it's churned. We make small batches every morning, and a scoop is happiest within 24 hours. Pints travel well for an hour packed in dry ice.
Are any flavors plant-based?+
Three on the regular menu, marked Plant-Forward. We swap goat's milk for cultured almond or oat milk and use a vegan-friendly salep blend. Same chew, no compromise.
More questions? Drop us a line.
Come say merhaba
A scoop, a tease, a quiet five minutes by the window.
The flagship is in Kadıköy, five minutes from the ferry. We open at 11. The cream is always at its silkiest just after lunch.