We ate last weekend at the brand new Turkish restaurant which has opened in Park Slope called “Alaturka”. They had only been open a week when we went. Usually I like to give new places a few months to settle in before trying it, but since we’ve been waiting so long for a Turkish restaurant to come, we couldn’t resist.
The owner, Çağdaş was extremely friendly and accommodating. We got there around 6pm on a Sunday night and the small room was pretty crowded. We decided to split a few meze and then share 2 main courses between the 4 of us.
We started off with an order of patlican salatasi (eggplant salad). It was delicious, nice smoky flavor, with bits of red pepper in it and lots and lots of garlic. I should mention, that the star of the meze was the pide bread that they bake fresh themselves. It came out hot and fresh and was fantastic. We also had çoban salatasi (shepard salad), and imam bayildi (stuffed eggplant). The stuffed eggplant was tasty but not really served correctly. Usually this dish is served cold, but ours was slightly warm, which I think took away from it. I think that they had just made it and it didn’t have a chance to cool yet.
For main course we shared 2 orders of Adana kebab. The meat was juicy and full of flavor. Really delicious. My only complaint here was that I personally prefer it more spicy, but this was still great. For desert we had an order of kazan dibi – a type of pudding. It was one of the best I’ve had.
All in all I think that Alaturka is a great addition to the neighborhood – solid, standard Turkish food and reasonable prices. I definitely plan on going back.
Çağdaş, the owner of “Alaturka”