Bringing a delicious Turkish taste to Oswego

Sevgi Evren Familo, Turkey

Owner of Tatlim Bakery, Oswego

By Mary Beth Roach

Éclairs covered in chocolate.

Macarons in flavors such as maple bacon, birthday cake, apple pie, strawberry, coffee and lemon blueberry.

Parfaits, cream puffs and a variety of coffees — including Turkish.

Is your mouth watering yet?

These are just some of the treats created by Sevgi Evren Familo at her Tatlim Bakery at 37 E. First St., Oswego. The shop also offers Turkish grocery items, such as teas, cookies and nuts.

It was love that brought her to Oswego and it was a love of food that she and her husband, John Familo, share that led her to opening her shop.

Sevgi, who turns 32 this year, met Oswegonian John Familo in an online video game. They were married in her native country 10 years ago. Three weeks later, they came to Oswego and were married here.

She said that she spent her first two years acclimating to her new home and new culture. She explained that she didn’t know how to drive, she was very apprehensive on the phone and when she tried to find work, she had very little luck.

“I struggled finding a job,” she said. Although she had earned a college degree in political science in her homeland, she wanted to pursue higher education. It was one of her goals had she stayed in Turkey, she said.

With John’s support, she got a master’s in strategic communications from SUNY Oswego. She was also an adjunct professor in public speaking and interpersonal communications at this time. But she came to realize that teaching wasn’t for her, she said.

But she always loved food. She referred to her and John as “food tourists,” explaining that when they travel, they “go for food.” And she started baking items she wanted to eat, because, as she said, she found the sweets here a little too sweet.

The couple would invite friends over to their home, and Sevgi would bake them desserts, picking recipes randomly from a cookbook.

She said one of her earliest attempts at making macarons didn’t turn out right, but she refused to give up. She kept working on them — and working on them — until she got them right. She said she would record and time herself, so she could see when and where she made mistakes.

It was John who suggested opening a bakery.

“It felt like such an undertaking,” she said. John started poring over the rules, regulations and documents she would need to open this business. She began working with the Small Business Development Center at SUNY Oswego and credits John Halleron, who was a business adviser at the time, for providing the encouragement and business advice the couple needed.

Within just a few months, she said, she and her husband found the space and renovated it. She opened the shop in 2022 and is pleased with how the business is progressing. Her husband came up with the name Tatlim. It’s Turkish for honey or sweet — a term of endearment — so it’s a little play on words, she explained.

And eventually she hit on the macaron recipe she wanted.

These treats are probably her specialty and while the customers are eating them up, she admitted she can’t eat them anymore. “I tasted too many” while working out the recipe, she said, laughing.

Yet, her favorite is the éclair because it reminds her of the pastry that she loved so much from Zonguldak, a city in the Black Sea region of Turkey in which she was born.

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