Hamdi was a hit pop-up before a wage lawsuit. Where do they go now?

There’s more to Hamdi than the headlines. 

Maybe you took a ferry to eat chef Berk Güldal’s flame-tinged Turkish food during a pop-up a few years ago. Perhaps you read about Hamdi around the time of their restaurant opening in Fremont in fall 2022. There were many stories: In just a few months, Hamdi went from hit pop-up to buzzy debut to best-restaurant lists — to being named defendants in a wage theft lawsuit.

From early highs to the wage lawsuit and its subsequent fallout, Hamdi has seen it all. Three years in, the couple behind one of Seattle’s most interesting restaurants is more committed than ever to their dream, no matter the stumbling blocks. 

So: What’s the rest of the story? 

The backstory 

Güldal is from Turkey, while his business partner and fiancée, Katrina Schult, was raised in upstate New York. They met while working at the Michelin-starred restaurant SingleThread in California. 

Seattleites got their first taste of Güldal’s cooking in March 2021, when the couple were invited by a former co-worker (Grant Rico, owner of Greenwood American Bistro and newly opened Robin’s Restaurant and Market in Seattle) to set up outside Hitchcock on Bainbridge Island. As a part of a guest chef series, Güldal worked over an open flame for three days, cooking a whole lamb — the star of his menu of Turkish street food.

“We had ferries of people come,” Güldal said. He estimates they fed 1,800 people, many of whom were Turkish Americans rallied by a friend of Güldal’s father. “It was a crazy experience for us; we’ll never forget prepping and cooking on the street.” 

It had been a tough year in California for the couple. There were constant wildfires, and work at the restaurant was mostly on pause because of the pandemic, so they primarily did small catering dinners. After the pop-up, the couple explored Western Washington: checking out breweries, eating their way through Seattle, snowboarding at White Pass. It started to feel like home. 

Seattle — with its mix of mountains and water — reminded Güldal of Istanbul, with a fraction of his hometown’s 20 million inhabitants. After a strong reception for their pop-up, the couple moved their life to Washington. 

“We were looking for something,” Güldal said. “And we felt like this was a sign.” 

Starting that July, Hamdi began popping up at Samara on Sunset Hill (which has since closed) and at breweries like Fair Isle and Obec. Word of dishes like Hamdi’s hand-chopped lamb belly spread quickly. Lines extended down the block outside Fair Isle. 

Schult remembers “huge lines at pop-ups,” recalling how “it would be downpour raining and some of them didn’t bring umbrellas, but people are fine.” 

Before they opened a restaurant, though, Güldal took Schult on her first trip to Turkey, showing off his home country. They spent two months traveling — starting in Istanbul, they swam in the Aegean Sea and ate seafood before heading east. They surveyed cultural and culinary shifts, eating grilled meats, taking notes and writing recipes.  

At Hamdi, the couple wanted to build something that showcased the labor-intensive flavors of Turkey in a setting that showcased Turkish hospitality.

“Good food and love and good chats, that’s what we do,” Güldal said. In Turkey, “we drink a lot, we sit (at) the table for hours. We eat slowly and we enjoy. That’s what we want to bring to the table (at Hamdi).”

They signed a lease on a 38-seat restaurant on Leary Way in May 2022 — in the former Tarsan i Jane space — and spent the next six months preparing to open.

Expectations for the full-time restaurant were steep. Leading up to the opening, press lauded Güldal’s pedigree as a former chef at Eleven Madison Park and SingleThread; Schult was given equal billing based on her time at SingleThread and The French Laundry. After Hamdi opened in November 2022, The Seattle Times reported that it was “booked up for the rest of the year,” calling it “the hottest new restaurant in Seattle.”

Just a few months later, the restaurant was closed as its owners faced a lawsuit. 

The suit

For Hamdi, the hype came before a fall. 

“We were about to go bankrupt or open the restaurant,” said Güldal, who was tapping his foot while waiting for a health department inspection to open in 2022. 

Then: rain on opening day, perhaps an omen. 

“The day we opened the restaurant, it was downpour raining,” Schult said. But, unlike during the pop-up days, “the expectations were so much higher.” That first fall and winter, customers were quick to “leave and give a one-star (review)” if they had to wait on a table, Güldal said. 

That was just the start. 

In early January 2023, the owners closed the restaurant to recalibrate. A day later, four employees filed a wage theft lawsuit against Güldal and Schult. The suit alleged that Hamdi ownership ran afoul of multiple statutes surrounding wages, including violating the Seattle Wage Theft Ordinance, failing to pay overtime, diverting tips and failing to provide consistent meal and rest breaks.

Hamdi reopened that February and the lawsuit was dismissed after a settlement nearly a year later. 

When news of the wage theft lawsuit broke, Hamdi lost half its staff. Business tanked. Güldal understands why, saying, “It was very easy to judge us in that moment.” The couple kept the restaurant running with a skeleton staff as the costly case carried on.  

Hamdi’s owners are reticent on the topic of the lawsuit, but Güldal said he and Schult learned not to rely on handshake deals with staff. Everything now goes down on paper; they operate under a policy of full transparency “down to the pennies” with staff.  

“I’m glad we survived. I’m really glad we actually didn’t burn out and shut down everything,” Güldal said. “We took it personal. When you’re this much hands-on, working side by side, it hurts.”

The future

Fast-forward to 2025: Long gone are the long lines. These days, Schult and Güldal are worried about people keeping their reservations.

The restaurant is next to a gas station on a car-heavy stretch of Leary Way in Frelard. There’s not a ton of parking and little foot traffic, even with Fremont’s main drag a stone’s throw away. Without many walk-in customers and with only 38 seats, no-shows quickly become a problem.

With “10, 15 people (who would) cancel” on some nights, Hamdi instituted a reservation system that started with a $20 reservation fee. But “people didn’t even care.” 

“They still no-showed,” Güldal said, “just burning the $20.” 

The reservation fee bumped to $40, but there were still enough no-shows and last-minute cancellations that Hamdi bumped to a $60 reservation fee. You get the money back on your bill. The restaurant still sees no-shows.  

“People get offended, and I get it,” Güldal said. “I wish we could do better, but we have to protect this business, too.”

He and Schult still aren’t sure what’s getting lost in translation about their restaurant. 

“Maybe people were confused because they thought we were doing really fine dining,” Güldal said.   

Yes, Hamdi is nice. But it is not fine dining. 

Take that incredible signature hand-minced lamb belly kebab, which costs $34. In a city where a pizza can run you $40 or more, Hamdi’s owners don’t see themselves as a break-the-bank restaurant.

What else are people missing at Hamdi? 

The menu is succinct — all the chef’s takes on his beloved Anatolian cuisine spun through a Pacific Northwest-sourced lens. It’s not all meat, like the lamb belly; mung beans are crave-worthy at Hamdi, studded with jewel-like pomegranate seeds and topped with vibrant purple microgreens.

And if the vibes of a restaurant are punctuation marks, the atmosphere at Hamdi is an exclamation point.

The space is dark and moody and warm, with gentle, thumping music and the heat of a live fire cooking. It feels like Seattle’s hottest club, but instead of bottle service, you get incredibly tender lamb belly with a bracing tomato, herb and onion salad. It’s hip and slightly smoky — a world away from the bulb-heavy industrial chic dining rooms that are so popular. At center stage is Güldal, working by the fire, tweezing micro-herbs onto different plates.  

“It’s like a theater,” Güldal says. “You’re coming to our show.”

Service is casual and friendly but attentive and knowledgeable. Cooks run food and servers might finish a dish. Schult is a controlled whir, doting on each table. 

With the lawsuit and the hype in the past, Güldal and Schult said they’re trying to improve 1% every day at Hamdi. They remain passionate about bringing elevated Turkish food to Seattle. Though the road to this point has been difficult, they’re looking forward to the future optimistically. 

“We were so lucky to find this (restaurant),” Güldal said, “and that’s why we think we have something special on our hands. There’s nothing else like this.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the price of Hamdi’s signature lamb dish as $39. It costs $34.