The Turkish Grill Restaurant
Ottoman Style Cuisine - Restaurants In Sunnyside
Sunnyside Neighborhood / Sunnyside Restaurants / Queens Restaurants. It was a warm Friday night as two friends and I set out to sample the Turkish delights I’d heard about from acquaintances in the neighborhood. I had made reservations through Aziz who is one of the four partners who own and run the popular restaurant found at 42nd Street and Queens Blvd in Sunnyside. Yasemin, Aziz’s wife and sister of the chef, Ferhat, seated us at a table in the corner where we could enjoy the restaurant’s ambiance and converse with her about the food without disrupting the rest of the restaurant.
Appetizers - Hummus & Tabbouleh
On Friday night the Turkish Grill offers some specials so we decided to go with the house suggestions. We started with a mixed appetizer plate that featured four different delectables. In the photo you can see the hummus, which is a dip made of chickpeas mashed with oil, garlic, lemon juice, and tahini. Next to it was the tabbouleh, which is a salad of ground bulgur (dried wheat), parsley, tomatoes, scallions, green peppers, olive oil and lemon juice. This provided a nice complement to the creamy yogurt included on the plate. The next two offerings were both eggplant dishes, one smoked with garlic pepper and ground into a soft, very fine creamy grainy paste that we ate like a dip with the pita bread. And the other offering was fried eggplant which was cut into small soft chunks garnished with tomato and red pepper that melted in our mouths as we savored them. These last two appetizers were my favorites. And, as you can see in the photo, soft white beans rounded out the plate.
The mixed appetizers were followed by the chef salad, which was made of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and olives. The salad was properly dressed in a mixture of vinegar, olive oil, dill, parsley and Turkish bell pepper. Yasemin told us that they generally shop for their vegetables in New Jersey in order to get fresh-from-the-farm-produce, which frequently comes from Pennsylvania. They buy halal meat, which like kosher meat, requires it to be processed in accordance with well defined standards and guidelines that have a long history and tradition.
Sigara borek was served along with the chef salad. These are thin rolled doughy crepes filled with creamy feta cheese, dill and herbs; which is then pan fried. The taste of the soft feta cheese complemented the doughy exterior. We also tried the fried liver cubes, which had a nice breaded covering, and as we bit into them, had an almost cheddar cheese-like consistency. And for those who love liver, well, they had a very ‘liverly’ taste. The liver was complemented by onions, tomatoes, lemon and sprinkled with Turkish bell pepper.
Turkish Grill - Culture, History And Background
The Turkish Grill is run by two married couples, both of whom come from restaurant families back in Ankara, which is the capitol of Turkey. The Turkish Grill prepares and serves their food ‘Ottoman style’, which is cuisine that dates back to the traditions developed during the Ottoman Empire. In the photo to the right is Yasemin and her brother and chef, Ferhat.
