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Two new Turkish restaurants opened recently and I’ve sampled each in the last few days. Cafe Orchid, at 1746 W. Addison, is in the space formerly occupied by another Turkish restaurant, Demir Paradise Garden. Owned by a family hailing from Ankara, it has a large dinner menu filled out with familiar items: lentil soup, hot and cold mezzes, kebab, shish, doner, veggie plates, quite a few seafood items (calamari, mussels, trout, swordfish), and pastries. I’m looking forward to trying the manti, ravioli stuffed with ground lamb, the typically luxurious iskender, fried bread and doner meat smothered in yogurt, butter, and tomato sauce, and balik sarma, sardine filets wrapped in grape leaves, marinated, then grilled.
But the real surprise on the menu at Nazarlik is cig kofte, raw minced beef and spices kneaded with bulgur, sometimes for hours, then shaped into meatballs and eaten with fresh lettuce. Many recipes call for mutton but at Nazarlik they’re using beef, and couscous instead of bulgur. It’s so labor intensive that the Aksoys need a day’s notice to make it on weekdays, and two hours notice on weekends.
