Good People of vitruta: Kubilay Kahveci

Kubilay, welcome. We always start with the same question, so let’s not break the routine. For those who don’t know you yet, how would you describe yourself? Who is Kubilay? How did it all begin, what has your journey looked like so far, and where does it stand today?

Hey, thanks for having me.

I’ve spent most of my life in front of a computer. The first we had came from a family friend, without an internet connection. I mostly used it to play games, but I remember spending an unreasonable amount of time trying to work out what else it could do, without much guidance or material to go on. That curiosity stuck.

Ours was a fairly structured household. Both my parents were teachers at the time, and as an only child there wasn’t a huge amount of room to go off-piste. So when I eventually had some limited access to the internet, it made the world feel bigger. Not so much because of what was on it, but because of how it was made and how things looked. I taught myself the basics and started building things. I cared a lot about how they looked, without really having the skills to make anything look good. First attempts were impressively bad. I still have screenshots on old hard drives, which hopefully won’t see the light of day.

By then, I was set on studying computer science. Once I got there, I realised I was less interested in the science itself and more building things — what programming made possible. The theory didn’t quite land at the time. It has since, at least in parts.

I now work as a software engineer at Bloomberg, nearly a decade in, which doesn’t feel entirely real. I genuinely enjoy it, but at some point computers stopped being the centre of everything. For a while that space was taken over by sports; watching, reading, and occasionally writing. I was still chronically online, just with a different obsession.

Then, without a clear shift, I started spending more time outside of that world. I became more interested in shared experiences: food, live music, restaurants, travel. What stayed with me wasn’t just the thing itself, but who I was doing it with. It’s rarely just about seeing an artist live, it’s about seeing them with someone. The same goes for restaurants; less about trying a place, more about taking someone there.

I still have fairly opinionated ideas about what I like, whether it’s music or food, but sharing it with people I love has probably become the main thing.

You’ve now spent over 10 years in London. What feels different between the life you first arrived to and the one you’ve built today? How has your relationship with the city evolved over time?

Yeah, after many years in Ankara, I’ve been in London for the past ten.

I liked it from the beginning, and that hasn’t really changed. What has changed is what I’m drawn to. London gave me the space to build a life around those things, and probably shaped quite a few of them along the way.

The first few years were just wandering around, without much intent. Now I have a better sense of where I want to be. On a good day, say a long May evening when the sun refuses to go down, I almost know the exact streets I want to be on. Ideally on a Lime bike, a few pints in. London is one of those cities where you actually feel the seasons. I’ve always enjoyed that.

It’s not a place that encourages staying still. At some point the city just pulls you into things. A lot of my friendships came through sports and exercise. There’s a group of us who play football early on Sunday mornings, quite religiously. As if we don’t have anything better to do.

I started running here, and it’s oddly contagious. I think I got Mustafa into it as well; although he mostly runs one race a year, just to beat me. 

You’ve also had a chapter connected to Socrates. What has your relationship with sports been like throughout your life?

I wouldn’t say my path directly crossed with Socrates, but I’ve always been a big supporter from the sidelines. A lot of the people who brought Socrates to life are people I had previously written and worked with, in a much more amateur spirit.

In hindsight, it’s a slightly funny story. Most of those relationships started online when we were quite young. During middle school and high school, I was waking up every night to watch NBA games. Looking for people who were equally obsessed, I stumbled upon batug.com in a basketball magazine. I ended up spending most of my time there. The writing was unusually free and unfiltered. Basketball was the common thread, but it slowly turned into a place where hundreds of people were hanging out every day.

That’s where I met some of my closest friends. We spent years writing and talking about sports. After batug.com came to an end, we started yazihaneden.com in 2012 with Kaan Kural and Orkun Çolakoğlu leading the way, alongside Cem Pekdoğru and İnan Özdemir. A number of people who are now part of Socrates — Caner Eler, Onur Erdem, Ozan Can Sülüm — were there from the beginning as well.

Over time, it expanded beyond sports into music, film, and pop culture. We started doing podcasts, experimented with longer-form writing, and it still feels slightly surreal but we even published a book in 2015. It was all still very amateur in spirit. The first few years were pretty intense, then things slowed down, and it carried on in that form until around 2020.

Socrates itself started to take shape somewhere in the middle of that period. A lot of people from that circle were involved in building something genuinely unique in Turkey. It’s been amazing to see it continue, adapting over time while still producing things that feel interesting.

You built a life in Notting Hill. On one hand, it’s one of London’s most characterful and cosmopolitan neighbourhoods, and on the other, it carries all those iconic references from films and bookstores that people immediately associate with it. What is the real meaning of Notting Hill for you, and what is it that has kept you there?

Notting Hill tends to come with a very specific image from the outside. I’m not sure that version really holds up once you live there. I’ve walked past the bookshop that inspired the film more times than I can count and never felt the need to go in, which probably says enough.

What I like most about London is being out on the streets, and Notting Hill does that very well. As long as you learn how to ignore, or just avoid, the Portobello Road crowds. Beyond that, it’s the green, the houses I’ll never be able to afford, the pubs, the quiet streets, and then the slightly rougher ones.

That said, I end up spending most of my time in De Beauvoir Town, Dalston, and Hackney. At this point it’s a bit of a running joke — people are convinced I live in East London anyway. I’m not always in a rush to correct them.

There’s clearly been a journey that turned you into someone we call for restaurant recommendations. What were the things that shaped your palate and the way you experience places over time?

I don’t think it was ever very deliberate. It’s more a collection of things that stuck, and a few habits that got slightly out of hand.

I’ve always liked restaurant rooms as much as the food itself. The light, the artwork, who’s in the room and how they’re dressed. Sitting in a room full of people you don’t know, all there for roughly the same reason; that's oddly compelling.

Certain places and dishes stayed with me. The bone marrow at St. John, the fish stew at The Cow, the tripe at Mountain, a light-filled martini at The River Cafe. Not just because they were good, but because they shaped what I started paying attention to: the room and the context around the food.

I also keep a fairly obsessive list of restaurants I’ve been to. It started without much intention, but at some point it turned into a habit. I note down the date, a simple rating out of three, who was at the table, and what we ordered, or at least the highlights. That probably contributes to why people ask me for recommendations; I tend to have an answer ready, even if I’m not entirely sure it’s the right one.

Cooking has been part of it as well. Not in a serious way, but enough to change how I think about food. I sometimes cook with Mustafa for friends. We tend to try things we haven’t done before, and occasionally it works. Or our friends are kind enough to ignore the occasional underseasoned dish. That process of getting things wrong, adjusting, and paying attention probably shaped my taste as much as eating out did.

If vitruta were a person, how do you think it would spend a day in London? If you were to map out a route from morning coffee to late night drinks, where would you take us?

vitruta would need to know how to cycle. That’s basically the cheat code in London, everything else feels unnecessarily difficult.

We’d keep the morning light. Coffee and a smoked cheddar swirl at Layla, and then we head east.

Lunch at Dalla is the main event of the day. We’re not skipping the frittatina with aged balsamic, and we’ll probably end up ordering more pasta than necessary. Hopefully wild strawberries are in season and zabaione is on the menu. We’ll grab the table outside for dessert and a glass of Amaro Montenegro.

From there, we’d drift a bit. Around London Fields, maybe along the canal, then stop by FILES for vintage, Spazio Leone for furniture, from the same people behind Dalla.

By late afternoon we’ll probably feel like a drink. Hector’s if the weather holds, Yuki Bar if it doesn’t. Either way, it’ll be wine. Dinner stays light with small plates, which is not exactly hard to come by in London.

I’m currently slightly obsessed with Waltz’s cocktails and their glassware, but at that point it’s important not to move around too much. Maybe a few stops along Kingsland Road, as long as we finish at Three Sheets with their take on Irish coffee.

If we’re still going and craving something late, Mersin Tantuni is within walking distance. That’s usually how these days end.

We’re curious about your relationship with analogue photography. How did that interest begin, and what drew you towards it? In a time where the speed of digital is so dominant, what does producing through analogue mean to you? You also have a dedicated Instagram account for it.

There were always cameras around the house growing up, but it was never anyone’s main thing. It just sort of existed in the background. I bought my first camera at university and mostly used it while travelling, walking around and taking photos on the streets.

A few years back, a friend gave me a film camera from their family as a Christmas gift, which gave it a bit more weight. I tried to get into it, but I usually had a digital camera with me as well, and carrying both felt too much. So it didn’t really stick.

More recently, I picked up a Contax T3 because it’s small enough to always have on me. That’s what made it work. It’s been on ski trips, at birthday parties, generally just in my pocket.

I’m not entirely sure what film photography means to me in any bigger sense, but there’s a small part of it I really like. Dropping off a roll and then, a few days later, getting a WeTransfer link and opening it gives me a bit of a rush.

The Instagram account is just somewhere to put things without thinking too much about it. It doesn’t have much of an audience, which is probably for the best, but I like being able to see how what I’m shooting changes over time.

You seem to have a strong connection with cities like New York, Paris, and Istanbul. What are the shared or contrasting feelings these cities leave you with?

I think each of those cities comes with a very different pace, and I’ve ended up relating to them in slightly different ways.

New York is mostly tied to work for me, so the rhythm there is quite intense. There isn’t much room for downtime, but I actually enjoy that. It sharpens everything a bit. You move faster, and the days feel fuller because of it.

Paris feels almost like the opposite. I remember a line from Jarvis Cocker of Pulp about Parisians being militant about their right to enjoyment, and that stayed with me. There’s a certain commitment to pleasure there, and staring at strangers is practically a national sport, which I fully participate in. Also, getting there on the Eurostar from London is one of the best forms of travel.

Istanbul is a bit different. I’ve never actually lived there, and recently I’ve started to feel like I might have missed out on something because of that. I’m trying to spend longer stretches there now, just to get a better sense of it. It’s a city I’d like to have a more prominent place in my life over time.

I’m not sure I understand any of them, but I like moving through them.

Last year, we celebrated the first winter of the vitruta store together with Deniz and Defne. How did vitruta feel to you today?

That was a very sweet night.

I think vitruta manages to stay tasteful in a way that feels unforced, which is probably harder to do than it looks. It doesn’t feel overworked or overly considered, and I like that.

I was also very happy to see brands like Sunflower and Another Aspect from Copenhagen today. It’s a city I associate with a similar sensibility; things that feel well put together without trying too hard.

Today’s shoot is happening together with Mustafa. From the outside, there’s a strong sense of harmony between you two. What are the things you love most about him, and the sides of him that occasionally challenge you? :)

We’re not exactly lifelong friends, but we’ve spent enough time together for a certain rhythm to form on its own. 

What stands out to me is how tuned in Mozgu is to people. He picks up on things others might miss, especially in groups, and has a quiet way of bringing people in. He’s also just very easy to be around. Whether it’s a festival, a ski trip, a cooking gig or something more mundane, it all tends to feel like the right plan.

We overlap quite a bit in what we find funny or interesting, which probably explains how much we end up sharing, and occasionally going back to the same things.

The only slight downside is that he’s quietly very competitive. Most of the time it’s entertaining. Slightly less so when it turns on me.

Lastly, when you hear “vitruta” and “Good People,” what comes to mind? A brand, a neighbourhood, a person, a colour, an event… anything at all.

I don’t think I have a clean answer for that, which is probably a good sign. I have two slightly cop-out answers: silver and King’s Cross.

Silver, for obvious reasons given the interiors.

And King’s Cross because I’ve started associating it with vitruta. It’s not an area I used to go to that often, but now I have a reason to. That shift alone says quite a bit.