After a particularly long work day, I just wanted my bed but my colleagues were up for some food first. After a bit of fruitless walking about the South Bank, we spied this busy restaurant. We just managed to get a table for the five of us. While we knew that a busy restaurant was more of a guarantee of good food available, we had forgotten that it also meant a long wait for our orders! Oh well.
I ordered the lamb iskender, shredded lamb pieces in a tomato sauce over pieces of bread, with yogurt and their “special sauce” drizzled on top. The lamb pieces were very tender though there was a piece of mysterious, flabby, white thingy I found that I couldn’t identify within the stew. Hmm. The bread underneath was delicious, having soaked up all the lamby, tomatoey juices from the stew, and was somewhere between chewy and soft; there wasn’t enough of it though! The meat to bread ratio was unnaturally high and more bread was definitely needed.
You know, I did feel better after a bit of food in me!
Ahmet’s Turkish Restaurant
Shop 10/164, Grey Street
South Bank, Brisbane
Sun, 18 Nov, 2007 at 22:46
eww I wonder what that mystery piece was? The rest of the dish sounded wonderful after a long hard day.
Mon, 19 Nov, 2007 at 11:44
I think if you’d asked for more bread, they’d have brought it.
I can’t remember the last time I sat down to a real Turkish meal (Cyprus, 1969, I think) but I’ve often bought a shish kebab or a kofte ‘take away’
I prefer to call the cuisine of the Easten Mediterranean area ‘Levantine’ anyway; there’s quite a considerable overlap between Greek, Arab, Cypriot and Turkish … except, of course, in the Muslim countries, they don’t eat pork.
Mon, 19 Nov, 2007 at 23:55
Kat: I wish I knew too!
travelrat: You’re right, I should have asked for some bread. I tend to just call it “Middle Eastern” cuisine… though I try to differentiate between Turkish, Greek, Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian…etc.