MSA is a multidisciplinary culinary school offering cooking, bartending and barista classes. This restaurant is where they offer their students a platform to get hands on experience whether it is in the kitchen, in the bar or tending tables.
Let's start with the positive: the place is very well decorated with a wonderful terrace inside the Sabanci museum and the service is quite good at making you feel welcome. Instructors oversee servers helping you and intervene if need be.
However the food leaves room for improvement. While I appreciated the effort to serve ordinary dishes with a twist, in most cases the food you order ends up being a completely different dish. For instance my girlfriend order pad thai and the food was more akin to spaghetti with napolitana sauce.
Much of the plates on the menu are overpriced, especially for a restaurant where the staff are students. You mostly pay for their location and while the location and decor is good, it is still very expensive for what you get.
We finally had soufflé au chocolat for dessert, and saw a decent soufflé being spoiled by the way they serve it. The server asks whether you want him to give you the special presentation without telling you what it is. We had the misfortune of being courageous. He made a hole in the soufflé and stuck a cone of ice cream in the middle of the soufflé, before pouring in some more chocolate sauce in it. We had to quickly remove the ice cream with surgical precision to prevent it from melting in the soufflé and cooling it in the process. The eagerness for creative twist is harming the overall experience.
TLDR: Nice place, well decorated and very good service but overpriced for what they have to offer in food. Not sure if I would choose to go again. read more