Located directly on the Bosphorus waterfront, Bebek Hotel’s restaurant, Les Ambassadeurs offers fine dining with a nautical, club-like atmosphere and exceptional eye-level view of the sea. The cooking is fine-tuned (writes Andrew Finkel). Specialties include seafood dishes, such as the sea bass Ambassadeur, served in a delicious white wine sauce, aubergine meze which comes not chopped and tarama – cod’s roe salad. For dessert, go for the ekmek kadayıfı. Available for private meetings and events.

The dining room has a quiet dignity. The lighting is low and the design seems untouched by any notion of interior decoration after 1985. What this means is that there is no distraction from the wall of picture windows virtually level with the Bosphorus. As in an infinity pool, you might think you were in the sea (continues Andrew Finkel). For his full review, see Cornucopia 52.