Tune that radar to a different frequency people!

In retrospect I can see how my initial posting looked suspicious...but you guys sound so jaded! Just because a person posts a glowing review doesn't mean they're a shill! Is it possible? Sure. But maybe not as likely as you think.

People have different styles, and I only like to post about places that i like and to mention only the good things about those places (this is my first post on this forum). Sure, better hummus exists elsewhere in the city. But instead of bringing that up, I'd rather focus on how amazing their eggplant dishes are. Otherwise, I just end up sounding like every other armchair food critic who has to conform to a tired old "gotta come up with some negative things to say" format that can seem forced and entirely unoriginal.

In all seriousness, what do you guys think is worse: recommending a dish and discovering that a person didn't think it was as good as you indicated, or scaring someone off a dish that they would have thought was better? Not an easy question to answer I know, but based on my own experience making and taking suggestions, I would argue that the probabilities of these 2 scenarios happening are roughly equal, and therefore that making a negative review is not productive unless the dish is truly nasty. You can disagree with my argument here, but it doesn't really matter, as people should be free to write positive reviews if they want to, without being accused of anything nefarious.

I never expect a restaurant to be perfect, or perfectly consistent (because no restaurant is). Of course Cafe Orchid has strengths and weaknesses, but the general thrust of my posts were to say that their weakest offerings are pretty darn terrific.

I've rarely been to this restaurant when it's jam-packed, and that bothers me as it deserves better.

People use sites like these for different reasons, but mine is to get more people to patronize this place so it does well and is never in any danger of vanishing one day. So mentioning details like like free parking and proximity to a brown line stop are not trivial things at all when you're trying to convince someone to try this place for the first time, are they?

In any case, I understand your concern, and your passion for honest reviews and good food are commendable. Rest assured I have no affiliation with this restaurant (except that they recognize me since I go here regularly, and sometimes give me little complimentary extras like tea and pastries).

HT70 wrote:Spf5000 - I don’t think he/she meant anything personal. There’s a pretty good history here of the following:

1) Old thread about a restaurant is revived by the first post from a brand new member.
2) New poster raves about everything, including some trivial things (ex. free parking and close to the brown line stop). There’s not a mention of anything that was marginal, average or outright bad. The post, in essence, sounds like a glorified advertisement for the establishment.
3) New poster is exposed to be associated with restaurant….either owner or close friend of owner.

Hey, I love Café Orchid too, but my shill radar was screaming after your initial post.

Please amend your history to include: Please report to a moderator a potential shill rather than approach them directly. They will sniff out a shill from the well intentioned enthusiast.

Thank you!

Regards,
Cathy2 for the moderators

Had another wonderful meal at Cafe Orchid last night.

I always order the char-grilled cold eggplant salad which is my favorite eggplant dish in the city. It has a lot of garlic and olive oil and is a perfect accompaniment to Cafe Orchid's good bread. This time I had the sea bass special which was a beautifully charred fish, moist on the inside with a crispy / salty / seared skin. I also ordered the mixed kebab combination plate. Everything on the mixed plate was good, although nothing spectacular compared to other great kebabs you could read about on this site. Spinach and fresh mozzarella salad and manti in garlicky yogurt completed an excellent meal. Finally, I asked for my must-have dessert -- the darkest, most caramelized piece of kazan dibi (a semi-sweet Turkish custard that is toasted marshmallow-brown, dusted with cinnamon).

Service was friendly as always. A few months ago, one of the servers who had just returned from two years ago in Afghanistan recently recognized my wife and me from years ago. This time, a new server whom I had never met followed my family out into the parking lot to personally thank us for dinner.

Finally, although certainly not food related -- but, since it was mentioned earlier in the thread: thefact that Cafe Orchid is steps from the El, has a free parking lot, and is BYOB is definitely a plus.

Our office ordered lunch from them the other day. Unfortunately I had already taken my lunch but after walking past some of the food, I decided to opt in for dessert.

I have found one of my new favorite foods, Kazan Dibi (http://kalofagas.ca/2009/11/21/). It is a caramelized milk pudding which is not too sweet and the pomegranate seeds that Cafe Orchid adds on top of the custard explode tiny bursts of tartness which perfectly compliment the dish.

Anyway, when you go, give the kazan dibi a try.


Image linked from http://kalofagas.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_2789-1.JPG

Indeed, Cafe Orchid's Kazan Dibi is an excellent sweet, and good enough to warrant a trip on its own merits.

We have a lot of great Turkish restaurants in NYC. Cafe Orchid runs with the best of them. A true gem.

We were in a party of seven last night (my first visit to Cafe Orchid) and I agree with all those here who consider it a very special place.

On the waiter's recommendation we shared, for an appetizer, the entree item on the menu called Veggie Combination (hummus, ezme, stuffed grape leaves, tabuli, eggplant salad, lentil fingers, falafil, and feta wrap--I'm cribbing from the online menu) and every element of it was outstanding. My entree was the Uskudar (lamb cubes sautéed with onion, tomatoes, mushroom, red and green peppers, and garlic, wrapped with sliced eggplant, served with bulgur) and it was fantastic--the lamb tender and flavorful, all the vegetables doing their part to contribute to the excellence of the dish.

I want to say a word about our waiter as well. His service was perfect, warm, and considerate. I advised him at the beginning that I have a walnut allergy, and when he brought the Veggie Combination to the table, he let me know that he had substituted out one component of the plate in response to that. Overall, everything he did made us feel welcomed; I don't want to go overboard, but the feeling of hospitality he extended almost made me feel as if I were a guest in someone's home. Cafe Orchid--a treasure!


Edited to add: My only regret is that GNR nominations and voting are over for this year. If I had visited Cafe Orchid a month ago, I would surely have nominated it, and my bet is that the ensuing discussion would have resulted in a win. Must remember for next year.

We really enjoyed Cafe Orchid when we went there pre-theater one night. It definitely felt like we were in a restaurant in Istanbul. We had a hard time narrowing the choices down, and everything we had was quite tasty. Definitely make a reservation for weekend nights. Even though it has parking, it's quite convenient by CTA (my preferred option, especially if you take advantage of the BYO like we did).

skess wrote:There are some dishes that give me consumptive dissonance, my take on the psychological concept of cognitive dissonance. I had this experience with the Iskender ($13) from Cafe Orchid. I consider consumptive dissonance to be the discomfort that arises from knowing that I am full and satisfied, yet having a dish so tasty that I continue to eat it. Almost unknowingly, the fork makes trip after trip while my stomach expands reluctantly and my taste buds frolic. You can tell when it's manifesting because you'll hear me say, "Okay, now I'm done." or "Seriously, that's it." Before, during, and after each bite, I know that, obviously, this will be the last bite. It's not. Cue dissonance. Though while the real one will give you mental discomfort, consumptive dissonance focuses on physical.

I had the same issue with the Iskender last night. Once you get a perfect bite of buttery bread, tomato sauce, doner meat and yogurt together, you've handed over all control to your hand and mouth, because your brain won't be able to stop you until the plate is clean.

We also enjoyed the Kibbe appetizer (turkish cracked wheat stuffed with ground beef, onion, walnut & turkish spices served with hot & yogurt sauce). Three crisply fried, breaded pockets filled with delish, piping hot meat stuffing. I could have had 4 more orders of these.

We had dinner there the other night. It's an overused phrase -- like eating at someone's home -- but that's what it felt like. It's very laid back but they're proud of their food and seem to be glad you're there to eat it. The Lentil Fingers in the appetizer sampler were a delight. I'm looking forward to finishing my Iskender (w/Donar) for lunch today. We're going back soon.

StevenStern wrote: It's an overused phrase -- like eating at someone's home -- but that's what it felt like.

It's laid out like a house, too, which helps.

Thanks to its recent nomination for a GNR Award, boudreaulicious and I had diner at Cafe Orchid last week. Although she has visited and gotten take out from this neighborhood fave in the past, this was my first visit. Even though there were only two of us, in true LTH fashion we managed to sample quite a good cross section of the menu.

Cafe Orchid Kibbe


This was the weakest dish of the night. I felt the bulghur "crust" to be a little too thick and the meat inside to be very under seasoned. Being a Turkish food neophyte, I'm wondering if this is just a simple matter of ordering a dish not normally served at the Turkish table; akin to the "ordering spaghetti in a Mexican restaurant" analogy that was made upthread, because everything else we had that night was noticeably better.

Cafe Orchid Eggplant Salad


This cold salad was a great blend of eggplant, garlic, bell pepper, scallions, parsley and oil. It very much reminded me of a dish that my Russian/Jewish Grandmother used to whip up all the time. Eaten with the superb house baked bread, this dish was a standout.

Cafe Orchid Manti


With visions of the excellent dish by the same name served at Kabul House, I enthusiastically ordered this appetizer. It turns out that it's actually completely different than what I had been picturing in my head (Imagine that. Afghani and Turkish food is different ). This dish features small, almost pelmeni-like dumplings in a yogurt and tomato sauce. Actually, our waiter asked if we wanted the tomato sauce or the yogurt sauce. When he saw the look of indecision on our faces, he said, "I'll bring both", and I recommend you order it the same way. The combination of the two sauces was very good and is a fine vehicle for dipping that great bread.

Cafe Orchid Borani


This sauteed spinach salad was also quite good. It wasn't cooked to death, as one might find in Indian or Pakistani versions. It still had a fresh taste and chew that was complemented by the ubiquitous yogurt sauce.

Cafe Orchid Iskender


Once again unable to decide between the tomato and yogurt sauce, our waiter brought this dish of stewed lamb, bread and spices to our table with both sauces. Although it made for a sloppy plating job, I appreciated the willingness to accommodate our rquests and the overwhelming hospitality I felt from everyone at the restaurant. Should I order this dish again, the tomato sauce would be my clear choice next time. The long simmered stew was outstanding and I highly recommend it. You can order iskender with lamb (as we did) or with your choice of doner kebab, adana (lamb) kebab, beef, chicken or kofte, depending on your mood.

All in all, I really enjoyed my visit to Orchid Cafe and hope to add it to my rotation, albeitet probably not all that often mostly due to its location relative to where I live and the overwhelming number of places that I like to visit from time to time. Still, if you're in the mood for Turkish food, Cafe Orchid is a winner.

Beautiful pictures above. Cafe Orchid is a good one and one of my favorites in Chicago (the other being Troy Mediterranean Grill in Lakeview). Only been a few times, but at least the "outdoors" portion does definitely remind me of some of the cafes/restaurants I ate at in some of the small villages in Western Turkey. I wouldn't say Istanbul though (depends on where). The food here is pretty much on par with what I've had in Turkey though. A dish or two might have been better than some I've had in Turkey before (i.e. the Iskender). This doesn't mean anything 100%, but when you can have something on par or better than what's in a country, it's a good sign.

The one thing I wish they and many other Turkish places in the city would improve upon is the tea. Turkey drinks the 5th most tea per capita of any country in the world. It's far more popular than coffee amongst its actual residents (I would go as far as saying Turkish Coffee is half a tourist shtick). Pretty much all of the places will serve you something like apple tea in a bag. That's even worse than "tourist tea" IMO. I wish they would get the real thing. People here don't know what they're missing with some of the real Turkish teas and it's a shame these places don't serve more of the loose leaf stuff.

We did takeout from Cafe Orchid the other night. Our order included Lentil Soup, Borani, Iskender with kofte, and Imam Firin (baby eggplant stuffed with tomatoes, onion, green & red bell peppers, parsley, dill, garlic, olive oil & pine nut baked and topped with mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce served with bulgur). The Iskender came with both the tomato sauce and yogurt, which made me happy because I wanted to try it with both. Overall, we were pleased with our meal. I loved the Borani - the textures and flavors worked so well. I also enjoyed the Iskender -- it felt so decadent to sop up the bread-laden sauce with more bread. The lentil soup was fine -- Mr. X still prefers the soup from Taste of Lebanon. The baby eggplant dish was fine, but not as interesting as the other dishes. We were pleased with our meal and look forward to dining in as I think that would allow the food to shine even more.

The GP wrote:The lentil soup was fine -- Mr. X still prefers the soup from Taste of Lebanon.

Heck, I nominated Cafe Orchid for the GNR and I think Taste of Lebanon's lentil soup is better. That's a seriously great soup they serve at ToL.

I much prefer Orchid's lentil soup to just about any "Middle Eastern" restaurant's. Strong lamb broth flavor. That's my shit.

Also, can we please stop judging Orchid on how well they put out squarely Arab/Levantine dishes?

Habibi, enlighten us please. What would you order, what would you not?

Ronna and I had a very good meal at Cafe Orchid this week.

We took Habibi's advice and stuck with Turkish classics, starting with 3 meze: patlican salata (eggplant salad), ezme (spicy red pepper/walnut spread), and cacik (yogurt, cucumber, garlic). All were good, solid versions, but the strongly-flavored ezme was excellent.

Next up, lahmacun. This little lamb flatbread was just a touch too greasy, but the texture and flavor of the bread and lamb were terrific. Folded over with just a little salad and a squeeze of lemon on top and it was one of the best bites of the meal.

We also split the mixed kebab combo, which came with doner, adana, chicken, and kofte. The doner was tender, with crisp edges, great flavor, and was the stand out favorite for both of us. The unusually-moist-for-white-meat chicken and red pepper, herb, and onion spiked adana kebab were also excellent. We completely cleaned our plate except for the sad, mushy kofte, which had good flavor, but a quite unappetizing meat batter-like texture. Not sure what went wrong there, but it doesn't much matter, as I am going to have a tough time ordering any main other than the delicious doner at Cafe Orchid in the future.

We also thought the restaurant had a friendly, neighborhood vibe and solid, efficient service. We're sorry it took us so long to try it out and we'll be back when we need a Turkish fix.
--Rich

I was at a group meal at Cafe Orchid on Friday and it really opened my eyes to what the restaurant is capable of.

I brought a bottle of raki with me and I was very pleased when they immediately brought out the proper glassware, a bucket of ice, and a pitcher of water. Also, I was very happy with the flow of the meal. We ordered a large round of cold appetizers, followed by a smaller round of warm appetizers, and rounded it out with a large plate of mixed kebabs. This is how larger meals are traditionally enjoyed in Turkey and I felt the menu really lent itself to this style of dining while the servers did a great job of managing the pacing.

I've always felt Cafe Orchid's strength is the cold appetizers. For me, the highlights from this meal were the eggplant salad and the lentil fingers. The eggplant salad was magnificent. Great smokey flavor, great balance with the lemon and vinegar, and excellent fleshy texture on the eggplant. It's a hard balancing act to leave the flesh of the eggplant in tact while charring to get the smokey flavor and this rendition was a show stopper. The lentil fingers were nice and moist and had good cumin and red pepper notes that complemented the earthy mashed lentils. It's a dish you don't frequently see on Turkish menus and I appreciated the role it played on the table filled with olive oil and lemon juice style dishes. The ezme was solid as well. It had a spiciness to it that played well with the sweetness of the roasted red peppers and crushed walnuts.

From there came the round of hot appetizers. We ordered the mujver and the fried liver. The mujver is a zucchini pancake that is mixed with feta and dill. The pancake had nice crispy edges and the dill and feta accented the sweetness of the zucchini beautifully. The liver is cut into small cubes, fried with butter and onions, and topped with a healthy dose of cumin and hot red peppers. This rendition was quite robust in its spicing and it stole the show. The small cubes of liver were crispy on the outside but still soft on the inside. The cumin and onions really stood up to the minerally liver and made for a truly memorable dish.

Next up was the entrees. The star of this round was the kebab plate that was nicely laid out on large platters so it was easy to share. The kebabs were served atop bulgur rice that soaked up flavors from the meat. The crunchiness and nuttiness of the bulgur really is a great platform to enjoy the kebabs. The adana kebab was my favorite of the bunch. Plenty of lamb flavor, good crust on the outside though still plenty moist, a good amount of spicing, it really stood out. I also enjoyed the cop sis. It's small pieces of marinated lamb served on a skewer. The pieces were tender and gamey, they were great with a dollop of yogurt. I enjoyed the plate of manti as well. I actually prefer it without the tomato sauce, something I'll have to mention next time as I'm ordering it, but the dumplings tasted fresh and the lamb stuffing was well seasoned. We also ordered a round of desserts, though honestly I was too full to enjoy them.

Overall it was a really fun meal and I'm excited to return and enjoy the food and hospitality again. I highly recommend ordering a good variety of mezes and rounding the meal out with kebabs instead of the other way around. I think this highlights Cafe Orchid's strengths and makes for a really enjoyable meal.

Very much agree with the above with special honors to the liver and onions. For those of us that like this dish, this is a wonderful variation not to be missed. Along with RL's more traditional version, my favorite examples in the city.

The meal described above by turkob was stellar on so many levels. Before that meal, I'd been to Cafe Orchid a couple of times and thought it was excellent. But Friday's dinner was a perfect convergance of factors that really "unlocked" the place for me:

It was a Friday so folks were generally not out on a school night.

We'd had a couple rounds at Scofflaw, which were a lovely tune-up

We were a large group, which allowed us to sample the menu well.

We had the Orchid's savvy GNR nominator, tapler, with us.

We had turkob with us. He understands the cuisine and speaks Turkish. He even ordered in Turkish.

Given these factors, the chances of success were fairly high. All that was left was for the restaurant to deliver and they did just that. Even with a group of 13, they threw down. And turkob has laid out a brilliant road map for Cafe Orchid. I hope he'll come back and list everything we ordered by name because I wasn't involved in the ordering and I'd really value having that information for future visits.

I thoroughly enjoyed everything we ate but absolutely loved the front end of the meal. The cold dishes were excellent, especially the eggplant salad and the ezme. The hot appetizers were fantastic, too. The lentil fingers were the stuff of legends, with their dense texture and deep flavor. The mujver was also a real treat.

But the liver and onion dish described above was one of the best things I've eaten in a long time. I simply could not stop eating it. I enjoyed it on so many levels. Not only was it delicious through and through but it was also so cool to experience a variation on liver and onions that I'd never encountered before. And seeing the reaction to this dish by several companions at our table was a great shared moment. Right now, this is the single best dish I've eaten this year. I realize it's only early March, I but I think I'll be saying this for months to come.

Kebabs were all distinctively flavorful but one (don't know its name) was too salty for me and on the texture side, another was slightly dry and a bit more crumbly than I would have preferred. Still, the doner and adana were excellent. I loved the rice and bulgur on the platter, which absorbed and then delivered the delectable run-off juices from the kabobs.

There was one dessert -- described by our server as warm mozzarella -- that was topped with crispy, shredded fillo and grated pistachio in a sweet sauce. It was so wrong and yet so right. It was ultra-rich, buttery and delicious.

I already thought Cafe Orchid was a great spot but Friday's dinner solidified it for me. I'm so glad we were able to benefit from tapler and turkob's expertise. I hope that having picked up some usable knowledge about the menu, future meals at Cafe Orchid will be just as wonderful as Friday's exceptional dinner was.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:I hope he'll come back and list everything we ordered by name because I wasn't involved in the ordering and I'd really value having that information for future visits.

Here's a breakdown of what we ate.

Cold Appetizers
Eggplant Salad (Patlican Salatasi)
Stuffed Grape Leaves (Yalanci Dolma)
Lentil Fingers (Mercimek Koftesi)
Ezme
Baby Eggplant (Imam Bayildi)

Hot Appetizers
Zucchini Pancakes (Mujver)
Fried Liver (Arnavut Cigeri)

Entrees
Iskender Kebab
Manti
Sultan Delight (Hunkar Begendi)
Mixed Grill including doner kebab, cop sis, adana kebab, kofte kebab, chicken shish kebab, beef shish kebab

Desserts
Baklava
Kadayif
Kunefe
Kazandibi

ronnie_suburban wrote:We had the Orchid's savvy GNR nominator, tapler, with us.

We had turkob with us. He understands the cuisine and speaks Turkish. He even ordered in Turkish.

I think turkob was the shoo-in for MVP of the night (well, maybe co-MVP with the chef). I've always loved Cafe Orchid, but the meal we ordered with turkob's guidance really did raise my esteem for the restaurant to a new level. A memorable night of food, drink, and community, for certain. Şerefe!

My girlfriend and I went in last weekend to get some Turkish breakfast. If you aren't familiar with Turkish breakfast, you should be. It's one of the main food things I miss from Turkey actually. It's not advertised at Cafe Orchid (the waiter was surprised we knew about it until I explained I'm a little bit Turkish and have been there).

Here's what we got:

Plate full of tomatoes, onion, olives (not the canned kind), Turkish feta cheese, mozarella, another type of white cheese (forgot what kind), green peppers, sprinkled with Kirmizi Biber (Turkish red pepper) and some strawberries on the rim. Then of course we got the loaf of bread with Turkish honey (superior to regular honey), Kaymak (like clotted cream), butter, and some mixed berry (blueberry, raspberry, etc) reduction. Then of course we got the plate of scrambled eggs with sucuk (Turkish sausage, pronounced soo jook). No borek, but it was fine. Of course we were able to refill our bread and we got tea on the side (refilled once too). SO for all this plus two teas, it was something like $17 or $18 after tax.

If you are near there and want to experience a little Turkish breakfast, stop in and ask if they can do it.

turkob wrote:I brought a bottle of raki

Please tell me where I can find some Raki in Chicago. I love that stuff so much...YUM

Binny's carries it.

tapler wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:We had the Orchid's savvy GNR nominator, tapler, with us.

We had turkob with us. He understands the cuisine and speaks Turkish. He even ordered in Turkish.

I think turkob was the shoo-in for MVP of the night (well, maybe co-MVP with the chef). I've always loved Cafe Orchid, but the meal we ordered with turkob's guidance really did raise my esteem for the restaurant to a new level. A memorable night of food, drink, and community, for certain. Şerefe!

Well, thanks, to both of you and -- and the chef.

It was also very kind of you both to bring the potables to share with us. Turkob, I really appreciate you listing out what we had, too.

=R=

turkob wrote:Binny's carries it.

Awesome, thanks. Will look for it at one next time. I'll be in Istanbul again in around 3 weeks Can't wait..my favorite city in the world.

I had an amazingly disappointing dinner at Cafe Orchid last night. I offer my experience as a data point in the list of experiences with this restaurant, not because I like to complain.
[Really! I don't like to complain!]

I got to the restaurant around 7:30 last night; a last minute decision after I got my hair cut. There was only ONE couple in the restaurant at the time, but it appeared from the table configuration and 'reserved' signs they were expecting some large parties [and two 4+ parties did show up later]. I was given a small table jammed up against the door, handed a menu, and completely ignored for at least 15 minutes. With only 2 other people in the entire restaurant.

As I was deciding whether I had gotten to the walking-out stage or not, one of the wait people finally came to take my order. I sat there for another 15-20 minutes with nothing but a glass of water. When my appetizer appeared, I had to ask for bread. Nothing but water was provided for a full half hour.

My app was mucver [zucchini pancakes]. I ordered it because I had made a version several times last summer and I wanted to see how mine measured up. The pancakes I was served were so badly prepared that I never would have served them to one of my guests. They had been cooked in oil that was the wrong temperature; they were too brown on the outside and undercooked on the inside.

My entree, uskudar [lamb bits and veggies wrapped in eggplant] was better, but I still found it disappointing as a dish. There was not a lot of distinctive flavor to the lamb/veggie mixture, and it was topped with a tomato sauce that tasted like . . . tomato sauce. Like out of a can and heated up tomato sauce. And the whole thing was decorated with some nearly-raw sweet pepper slices. Maybe this is authentic tasting; I don't know, I haven't have the pleasure of traveling to Turkey. But I found it bland and under-flavored.

So: I did remember not to order "Middle Eastern" dishes as prescribed earlier in this thread, but did not actually pull out my phone to see what others found stellar.

And also: I have noticed that many of my less-than-satisfactory dining experiences come when I am eating alone. I make a point of being pleasant to all staff: make polite eye-contact, say please and thank you. I make a point of tipping 20%, even after an experience like this; I want wait staff to earn a living wage and neither know what's going on behind the scenes or want to perpetuate negative feelings about solo woman diners. I should be more assertive about sending bad food back to kitchens and leaving a restaurant when I'm being treated badly.

BUT WHY, for pity's sake, should I be served bad food and ignored in the first place?

I respect the dining knowledge and experiences of people who have had good experiences here. As I said at the front, I had to add my experience to the thread.

Giovanna

If it makes you feel any better, I was there a few months ago with 2 others and our initial service experience was similar--it took a long time to acknowledge us in the first place and even longer before the server came over to take an order. Since the restaurant is BYO, we only needed glasses which made it out to the table at some point. The food was good--I pretty much always order the same things there--the zucc pancakes aren't one of them. If you go back, I'd recommend the lahmacun (Turkish pizza) and the chargrilled eggplant salad as starters and the Iskender with the doner, lamb or lamb adana for an entree. The sautéed liver is also very good but too rich to eat solo. I also like the Manti when I'm sharing with others. Sorry you had a bad experience.

I've been meaning to try this place for ages. For one thing, the reviews are rather glowing; for another, Turkish food especially appeals to my locavore tendencies. I've read a lot of Turkish cookbooks; regularly serve my family versions of Turkish breakfast, and watch Tony Bourdain Istanbul with the same frequency others reserve for Love Actually. Now, granted this was one meal, but hey, I was not especially impressed.

Mostly, I thought the place was a poor value. For instance, like Riddlemay, we ordered the vegetarian combo entree as an appetizer. Now this is a $20 dish. What came was a one dinner plate with dollops of about six things. Of these six, some were very good, the spinach and the eggplant, but overall, it just did not seem like $20 worth of food. I was also thought the plates could have come with soup or salad or something for the price. I also thought the place was a little shabby, not kept quite spiffy, with lights flickering on and off at about 15 minute intervals adding to the dissaray. Hey, I understand, the whole Mom and Pop kinda thing. I understand a lot of effort went into the dishes--nothing tasted of shortcuts or such, and I fully understand the notion that "ethnic does not have to be cheap," but in this context it all did not add.

If the food stood out more, I would have been more forgiving. Most of the stuff was decent, just not wonderful. For instance, I had a hard time not comparing a chicken kabob plate to a similar plate at my beloved, now re-branded, Armenian place on Oakton. Everything is better there, the meats, bread, salads, bulger, sauces; there's twice as much and it costs half the price. Lately, my kids have been calling me Grumpy Pants McGee. So, I could go on, but maybe it's just old age.