Ala turca

12 March 2020

ALA TURCA

The Rockwell, Napier Street, Cape Town

This is not a tale of Turkish Delight.

When the wife and I presented ourselves at the entrance and the guy   couldn’t find my booking quickly enough, he questioned whether we were at the right Turkish restaurant, referring to Anatoli across the street. I confirmed that we were at the restaurant for which I’d booked but, in hindsight, it wasn’t the right restaurant after all.

Let’s start with the positives. The interior of Ala Turca is very beautiful and elegant, with dark wood tables and upholstered dining chairs, lovely modern light fittings and a general sense of roominess and upmarket flair. There’s also a large section of outside tables for warm evenings.

The menu consists of loose sheets of paper (thankfully, no photographs of the dishes), clipped to a board, and on first reading the dishes seem interesting and varied, though essentially grill based. The mezze are a mix of the familiar and the new and the mains feature all manner of kebap and variations on lamb or chicken dishes, Ali Nazik (which sounds like my favourite Turkish dish, hunkar begendi) and lamb shanks.

We started with cocktails (well, mocktails, as Ala Turca does not serve alcohol): a Summer Breeze for the wife and pina colada for me (R35 each.) They were very cold, sweet and delicious. The wife’s bottled water was quite good too. The service was good.

Here’s where we slide into the murky pit of profound discontent.

The wife’s starter was sigara boregi (R40) and mine was the lahmacum (R90.)

For the wife the phyllo pastry was oily, the crumbly texture unsettling and the spinach and cheese filling too salty. She ate one, I had the rest. I agree on the oiliness but I liked the crumbly texture, as if the smooth phyllo had been rolled in crushed pastry before being deep fried. I agree that there was a saltiness to the dish, it wasn’t the sharpness of over salted food but probably the cheese.

The lahmacum is supposed to be a starter and, if so, it must be a starter to share because the dish consists of three large, toasted flatbreads, folded in half, with spicy mince filling and tomatoes, cucumber and raw onion slices separately on the serving board.  I wasn’t quite sure whether I had to add the sides to the mince flatbread or whether it was a deconstructed salad.

The lahmacum was delicious and the wife, after pushing her boregi aside, ate one flatbread and really enjoyed it. It’s a variant on what we know and love as gözleme: mince between two thin flatbreads, pressed tightly together when toasted.

The wife’s choice of main was incik, described as roasted lamb shank (allegedly 500g) with mash potato and tomato sauce (R195.) 

The lamb shank was quite small and overcooked, and too quickly, on a high heat, with the result that the meat was dry and the fat not rendered. There was a disconcerting puddle of liquid that had leaked from the vegetables. No discernible tomato sauce. The freakiest thing on the plate was the alleged potato mash, which was quite unlike anything she or I had ever eaten. It had a gloopy texture and was completely tasteless. Truly unique in our experience yet not in a good way.

It looked like, and was as smooth as, potato puree and there was a diffident essence of potato but the texture was disturbing. The most apt way I have of describing it, is to say it’s as if grated cheese had been mixed into the warm mash and the mixture allowed to congeal slightly before plating. It was gooey like a home-made marshmallow but not as lovely. Sadly, if cheese had been added to the potato, it wasn’t even a fragrant cheese.

That mash was a bad, bad thing.

The wife got hallway through her dish and abandoned it. She’d eaten only as much as she could stomach, to mitigate the hunger pangs with which she’d arrived at the restaurant. As we were driving home, doing a meal post mortem, as one does, she summarised her main course as “gross.”

My main course was pilav ustu tandir (R155), described as roasted lamb cubes on Alaturca special rice. What I got was closer to disastrous döner kebap, not lamb cubes, and rice that was not that special, unless the whole almonds counted towards special points, Like the wife’s food, the dish had cooled down by the time it reached me.

The lamb was desiccated and lacked flavour (as did the dish as whole). What’s the point in grilling the meat if there’s no flavour from the process?  Not all Turkish food is heavily spiced, but they do use spice and general seasoning in their cooking and this dish had no wow factor.

I could manage only half of it because I ate too much of the starters, yet I didn’t regret leaving food on my plate, for once. Eating was just chewing; there was no palate pleasing involved in the act.

We left the restaurant roughly 80 minutes after arrival and that must be an indication of our experience. I’ve no idea what the dessert options are and whether sutlac would have been one. No Turkish coffee for me either. We paid and fled.

The waiter saw that we didn’t finish our food and enquired whether we enjoyed it. The wife made it clear that her food was not good. No-one (including the chef or manager) came to speak to us about our experience and as we left, there was no-one at the door to give further feedback to.

We love Turkish food and have been spoilt by Anatoli (Tayfun Aras’ version, specifically) and by food in Turkey.  Ala Turca reminds me of two Turkish restaurants we ate at in the UK, in upmarket ambience and in disappointing food, and if this is how Turks want to market their cuisine, more power to them, but we ain’t eating at Ala Turca again.

If the meat is meant to be dry, it’s not our preference. If it’s merely indifference to the cooking of the dishes, we don’t want to pay these prices to be fobbed off with substandard food. 

It’s no good if the liquid refreshments count as the highlights of the evening.

The total bill, with tip (conveniently already added to the total when the bill is presented) came to R660,00.