Go go gözleme

 8 September 2023

 

ZEETAN TURKISH RESTAURANT

233 Main Road, Three Anchor Bay, Cape Town

 

The thing with ordering Turkish food in Cape Town when one has been to Türkiye, is that there’s always the comparison between what one ate in Türkiye and the local offering.

 

Gözleme is a  case in point. It’s described as a savoury turn over, usually made with very thinly rolled unleavened dough and with a variety of fillings, cooked over a griddle. If you enter a restaurant in Türkiye and there is one, but often there are more, woman at the front who does nothing but roll out the dough and cooking the gözleme, you know you will have the real deal.

 

For us (the wife and I love gözleme), the end product should be spinach and Feta or spicy beef mince between two layers of very thin, crisp flatbread, but you can have shredded chicken, minced lamb, seafood, vegetables or cheese as fillings too.

 

Many years ago, when Saray was at the Imperial Cold Storage site on the Foreshore, they served me what they called gözleme in a pita. Cooked in Sea Point offers quite excellent gözleme in a Lebanese flatbread. Zeetan’s gözleme seems to be a  folded over lahmacun and resembles a flatter calzone.

 

Go figure.

 

This is gözleme from Bütme Evi in Istanbul from August 2022.

 

Seeing as how I’m trying to get back into a regular Friday breakfast groove and the wife was meeting colleagues for brunch at Jarryd’s in Regent Road and offered me a lift, I decided to check out the gözleme at Zeetan, given that three variations of them (beef, chicken or spinach) are on the breakfast menu. The other options are an omelette and a breakfast plate with sausages, eggs, grilled onions and tomatoes and bread.

 

The absence of çilbir, menemen and simit, to name but a few Turkish breakfast staples, is glaring. Several non-Turkish restaurants in Cape Town offer “Turkish eggs” as a breakfast option and it’s usually an adulteration of what çilbir is supposed to be. You’d think a Turkish restaurant that offers breakfast would make it properly Turkish.  

 

Zeetan takes up what seems to be two adjoining shopfronts (there are two distinct spaces) with windows only to the street. There is bench seating outside on Astroturf covered terraces and metal frame and wooden top tables with simple, upholstered chairs inside, with a strip of Astroturf running down the centre of the room. The service counters and kitchen are at the rear. The look is modern bistro rather than “Ottoman” opulence and is in line with similar types of places I’ve seen in Istanbul. However, in the daytime there’s zero atmosphere, especially if one is the lone diner.

 

I arrived half an hour into a two-hour loadshedding spell and when I stepped inside I confirmed that Zeetan was indeed open for trading.  It was, but I couldn’t have coffee (which I’d expected) and they could only offer me the omelette.

 

That wasn’t going to do and I probably would’ve walked if there were no other options but, to their credit, after my bottom lip  started quivering, they could do the beef gözleme I was there for.  Initially, my request for cay was also shot down and I received some hot apple tea on the house. I pointed out that it’s called “tourist tea” in Türkiye. Just a  subtle hint that I’m no neophyte regarding matters Turkish. However, again to their credit, I did get my cay after all. Perhaps there had been a misunderstanding.

 

The gözleme (R70) was very tasty, with a thin, crisp crust and a nicely spicy mince and cheese filling. I’d toyed with the idea of also ordering the spinach and Feta variant but it would’ve been too much.

 

Despite being on the menu as a potential dessert, sutlac was not available and I tried the revani (R50 for two pieces), a semolina cake supposedly drenched in a simple lemon syrup and topped with desiccated coconut flakes.  It’s in the same ballpark as the basbousa I had at La Menara recently  but where that was dry, the revani was indeed drenched in syrup, though not overly sweet, and crumbly. I know about the lemon syrup because I googled what revani is supposed to be and whatever the syrup was, it didn’t taste of lemon.  The cake was okay, I suppose, if semolina is your crush but it didn’t sink my submarine.

The cay wasn’t served as hot as I’m used to but it’s one of the best things to accompany Turkish food.

 

The bill came to R156,00 before tip.

 

I can only praise Zeetan for their willingness to accommodate me under trying circumstances and if their version of gözleme is different to my expectation, it’s still quite good. Pity about the sutlac.