Canberra chef Serif Kaya from Ottoman talks Turkish food

• Elias Hallaj reveals top Turkish venues
• Diana Lampe's classic Anzac fare
• Debbie Skelton's Turkish sumac roast chicken

Serif Kaya's restaurant Ottoman might be one of Canberra's finest - serving classic, refined Turkish dishes in an elegant white pavilion in Barton. But when he opened his first restaurant in the capital in the 1980s it was a very different story, one in which zucchini puffs were considered deeply exotic.

"People really wanted to try the food - but they also weren't quite ready for eating eggplants," he says. "You said to them, 'Just try it, I think you'll like it.' Convinced them a little bit. And they did eat it and said, 'Oh, it's delicious.' And then they kept coming back."

Kaya didn't intend to go into restaurants originally - he came to Canberra to study political science at the Australian National University. But then he opened a little restaurant, Alanya, in Manuka with his future mother-in-law Hatice Akcal. And he caught the bug. "Sometimes your heart tells you something so you follow the direction of your heart," he says. It helped that he married into a family of foodies - his father-in-law was the Turkish embassy chef, his wife Gulbahar who now runs the restaurant is "my biggest critic and my biggest influence" and his mother-in-law Hatice is praised for her brilliant cooking and resourcefulness in the kitchen. "They had a great deal of influence on me."

Another few years later, while Gulbahar studied at university, Kaya opened another restaurant - the hole-in-the-wall Anatolia in Civic. And eventually the path led to Ottoman, where Kaya and his team turn out beautifully simple Turkish dishes for prime ministers, Kaya says there was no conscious push to making Turkish food high end. "We never thought about classifying ourselves as fine dining. We just wanted to create good food and show a different side of Turkish cuisine," he says. "I think what has been emphasised in Australia by the people who came early - I think the White Australia policy finished in 1967? - some of them went into restaurants which was mainly Turkish pide and kebabs. But it's a cuisine that has far more depth than that. It's a cuisine which is a bridge between Europe and Asia."

Kaya speaks thoughtfully about Turkish cuisine and his knowledge is vast - he outlines the multiple and far flung threads of influence on Turkish food from the obvious Greek neighbours to the food of the Uighur people in far north China. There are all the dishes that use fresh seafood, not often showcased in the pide houses, such as the chargrilled king prawns dusted with spices and served with a smoky eggplant salad or the skewers threaded with kingfish and bay leaves. Or the soft, tender parcel of egg pastry filled with spinach and goat's cheese. "All the ethnic groups have their own style of cooking so we learn from them."

And then there is the Anzac connection. "We have the history with Australia in Gallipoli. There are no two nations in the world who have fought so much and yet have embraced each other. There is almost a kinship, we have a great deal of respect towards each other."

His own love of food came young, from his grandmother who was the village chef and the designated cook for community feasts, weddings and celebrations. She would forage for mushrooms, bring them home and cook them fresh for the kids. Or she would send Serif and the other grandchildren into the garden to pick Swiss chard which she would sautee simply. "These memories never leave your mind, they're engraved on your tastebuds and in your brain," he says. Later the family moved to Istanbul, to suburb that teemed with different cultures - Serif ate Greek and Armenian food at his friends' houses and his mother learnt to cook dishes from their mums. It's that foundation that's served him well.