New Business: Istanbul natives bring Troya Mediterranean restaurant to Cove

Corte Madera residents Berk and Betul Kinalilar, pictured here June 9, are the owners of Troya, located at The Cove shopping center in Tiburon. The eatery, which Betul calls a ‘sister restaurant’ to Troya’s San Francisco location, had its first meal service May 1. (Francisco Martinez / The Ark)

When husband-wife duo Berk and Betul Kinalilar would speak with Marin diners visiting their 19-year-old San Francisco restaurant, Troya, they’d often receive the same comment: “Open the restaurant in Marin.”

Living in the most diverse and dense culinary city in the nation, they said the request didn’t make much sense.

“We didn’t know anything about this area,” Betul says.

It wasn’t until they moved to Marin in 2018, and to Corte Madera on New Year’s Eve 2020, that they noticed that sit-down options for Turkish or Mediterranean were few.

“Now, it makes sense,” Betul says. “Tiburon and Marin needs more Mediterranean.”

So the Kinalilars acted on what their customers had been telling them all along. In May, they opened a second Troya restaurant serving Turkish and Mediterranean fare in The Cove shopping center, replacing fried-chicken sandwich shop Flybird. The restaurant served its first meal May 1 and expanded dinner service to Sundays through Thursdays on June 15.

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