Our last trip to Turkey made us come to the realization that the food here isn't necessarily the most flavorful of all cuisines. In fact, we were looking forward to more bland food. As we were window shopping for a half descent place to have dinner last night, however, we got dragged in by the guy standing at the door. He piqued our interest when he said they were number 1 in the Sultanahmet area on tripadvisor, so we went in. Our original waiter was terrible. When I asked him to change my glass because it smelled odd he actually snickered. We ordered soup and when we had to ask him for a spoon and ketchup he never came back. Never checked our water once. I assume he asked another waiter to help us and thank god he did! Our new waiter was a very friendly guy who checked on us several times in case we needed anything. He repeatedly refulled our glasses with water and asked us all if we'd like to get new plates even though he'd changed them after we'd had the appetizers. He made up for the other guy's attitude.
Foodwise:
In comparison to other restaurants I've eaten at in Turkey, I'd give this place a 5/5 for food. We had the lentil soup, mixed appetizer plate, mixed grill plate (I think it was called the loti special), the pistachio kebab, some fries (a double order) and the grilled sea bream. The original waiter told us the mixed plate was enough for 2 people. We are a family of big appetites, but I can assure you that the mixed grill is definitely enough for 4 people if you order appetizers. The soup was actually good. Nothing fancy, just a good flavored lentil soup. The mixed appetizer didn't really look like the picture in the menu. Very small portions. I tried them all except for the "humus" which didn't look very appetizing. As for the rest, they were all very good. Very, very good actually. They gave us 2 bread baskets. The first had stale bread, which was as hard as a hockey puck, but the second was much better. The french fries were generic in that they seemed to be the "frozen" kind. Also we asked for a double portion and what we got was what we'd consider a single serving in the US. They sprinkled on some seasoning on the fries and they were crunchy, so we couldn't really complain. We asked our first waiter to get us some ketchup and he got us a condiment holder that had Hellman's ketchup, BBQ sauce, mayo, and mustard. The ketchup was empty. He never came back and by the time the new waiter came over we had already finished the fries. The mixed plate had the eggplant kebab, chicken wings, chicken kebab, chicken chunks, beef kebab, some rice, fresh green chilies, grilled tomatoes, 2 small lahmacun, and the onion "salad" with parsley on the side. All of the meats had fantastic flavor. The chicken was superbly moist and tender and had an amazing grilled flavor. The pistachio kebab was also very good. I didn't try the sea bream, but I was told it was very good. From what I could see, it looked super moist. They offered us free tea which was a nice finishing touch to the meal. The total came out to be 290 TL which is not bad for the amount of food we got.
I would definitely recommend this place to anyone who happens to be in the area.
4,0
Lüks Yemek
