After an eventful winter for Turkey the season started very late this year and, even though we are approaching the end of June, it feels like the season has only just started.
Winter was relatively busy with construction. We had two new builds, a couple of project completions and a few small renovation projects. Much time was spent listening to the news and looking ahead with anticipation for the summer season and how it would be … thoughts quickly changed from the usual ‘will it be better than last year’ .. to…’just how bad is it going to be?!’
Nothing stays the same, in life things continually change and Korsan needs to change with it. In terms of our focus, it will now be less on the development side of our business for a while and more on the service side again.
Yes, we do have a number of properties to sell and we still have a couple of sites of our own to be developed, however, Korsan is happy to go back to concentrating on making those who visit Kalkan happy and content with us and with Kalkan itself.
On the restaurant front, after much research and investigation, we managed to find a supplier of black truffles. These are hunted out locally by trained dogs and delivered exclusively to Korsan. We hope to have regular deliveries through till the end of August. Octopus and truffle risotto at The Fish Terrace and truffle tartlets at The Meze are on the menu every day now. We also have various ‘Dishes of The Day’ with truffles throughout the week. We have also extended our ties with our meat suppliers in Fethiye, our new lamb dish, Lokum (means delight), is already very popular together with last year’s winner, the veal cutlet.
Some of you might remember that we produce our own Korsan cold press olive oil. After a great olive harvest at the end of last season, and us having more experience with the production process, we are now able to bottle and sell some of our fantastic olive oil. Bottles of Korsan Extra Virgin, cold press, Olive Oil are available to buy in all our establishments.
We don’t usually have TV screens in the Korsan properties but this year we have decided to show BBC Euro 16 football coverage in The Korsan Suites and The Korsan Apartments. There are strictly no sports events in The Fish Terrace and only the very occasional and exceptional big games will be shown in the Meze. I do think that there are more than enough screens in Kalkan at the moment.
The season is picking up, with more guests in town, we had a second sitting in Meze last Thursday evening for the first time this summer. The Fish Terrace was fully booked last night, again the first fully booked night since opening at the end of May. Claire says there are some green shots showing for accommodation bookings with even a few confirmed bookings for 2017. All we can do is keep working hard, keep faith in ourselves, in Kalkan and in Turkey and keep our guests happy!
I have seen it all before, the down turn comes and it goes …….
Best wishes to all.
Uluc