Update · November 2026
Börekçi Rıza is still open, in the same spot: Saydam Caddesi 61/B, Alidede, Seyhan. It opens in the evening and closes in the early hours; closed on Saturdays. Hours shift now and then, so call before you go. Address and phone are at the end of this post.
Since I kept running into great börek and pide on my Aegean and Mediterranean trips, before going to Adana I researched where to eat börek and pastry there. And I can assure you that this research set off the börek craze Turkey went through afterwards. Other börek makers in Adana got heard thanks to what we shared on that trip, too.
In the back streets I found far more serpme börek makers than I expected. The one thing they all lacked was the combination of a stone oven and oak wood: almost all of them baked in electric ovens, which, if you ask me, makes them taste alike. Room for improvement… But Börekçi Rıza, which I found while doing my homework on Adana’s börek makers and which many of my friends from Adana didn’t know, is easily one of the three best börek I’ve eaten in Turkey, and, I believe, truly one of a kind.
Someone should make a documentary about this family, who over the last ten years turned their grandfather’s tray-börek trade into a night-time bakery serving straight from the workshop.
Open only from 18:30 to 04:30 (closed Saturdays), it’s a simple, lovely place with just two kinds of börek: cheese, made with sheep’s cheese and Trakya and Kars kaşar, and minced meat with plenty of onion and pepper paste. Selling 500 kg of börek a day from a single shop, much of it in the small hours, says it all.
Börekçi Rıza, whose börek is likely to fill your nose with heavenly smells and send your palate on a gastronomic journey, is in my view one of the most special places in Adana’s food culture. Challenging a cuisine that revolves around meat with pastry takes real courage, and they pull it off. It was like eating a pasta with a crisp top, even a lasagna, but you need to multiply that feeling by at least ten to understand how good it is.
I hope I can help more people discover it, and I hope they carry on just as they are. In short: if you come to Adana and don’t go to Rıza in the evening, I’ll be amazed. Simple as that!
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