The vegetarian mezze platter at the Turkish Cafe, a good place for the family. Photo / Brett Phibbs
WHERE: 78-82 Broadway, Newmarket. (09) 520 2794
OUR MEAL: $192.50 for a shared platter, four mains, four glasses of wine, four beers and two coffees.
OUR WINE: Short, light-structured list. $6-$8.50 by the glass (Deutz Marlborough Cuvee is $12), $26-$45 by the bottle.
VERDICT: A good family cafe, and a great spot for a meal before catching a movie across the road.
OUT OF 10
FOOD: 6
SERVICE: 7
VALUE: 7
AMBIENCE: 6
It was a dark and stormy night. Well, it wasn't really, but it was certainly cold. Imagine our dismay, then, when we were shown to a table by the door at the Turkish Cafe.
The plan was to try it and then ask to be moved if
the draught became unpleasant. Even with many comings and goings, it never did. The Turkish Cafe is a great place for whanau, with a range of tables to suit the 2.4-kid families up to the 8-kid families.
The floor is polished concrete, for practical reasons I would surmise, and the wooden chairs designed for short-term comfort. The decor consists of menus on two walls and windows on the other two - no vast stretches of imagination or design called for.
In other words, it's a great place for a meal before a movie or show. You can get in and out quickly, but more on this later. It's the menu that takes the time. There are pages of it, starting with the short wine list.
The choices are mainstream New Zealand, but there is a Turkish red (yakut) and white (cankaya) on offer, both described as "dry, elegant, light-structured, fresh and fruity", and both $6 a glass. There's a cocktail list, including Turkish Death in the Afternoon, with raki.
There's Turkish beer too, and soft drinks, smoothies and fruit juice. All bases covered then. We flip over the brunch menu and start on the dinner offerings. And here it's not just all bases covered, but a world trip as well. Greek salad, antipasto, pita bread, ravioli, pizza - including Hawaiian, Kiwi, teriyaki and tandoori - fettucine, a side trip to Britain with Scotch fillet, a sortie to Mexico with nachos.
Don't think I've left any out, and I don't think the menu compiler at the cafe has either. We start with a vegetarian mezze platter ($32.50), with a promise to Bill that he can achieve his daily meat intake with the next course. The platter is a round-up of the usual suspects - olives, hummus, tabouleh, dolmades, feta, borek and falafel, with pita. All pretty much what you can find at the deli counter, in fact, but none the worse for that, and it's all quite fresh.
The brand-new and still shiny son-in-law, David, had not tasted Turkish cuisine before, so glevech ($24.50) seemed a good dish with which to break him in. The slow-cooked lamb with eggplant, tomatoes and capsicum was sufficiently spicy to keep it interesting, but not to put him off for life.
Sally went for her favourite, chicken shawarma kebab ($24), which came with the expected accompaniments of yoghurt, chilli sauce, tabouleh, green salad and pita, and was pronounced very good. Bill had the pick of the evening, he thought, with the Anatolia kebab ($24), spit-cooked lamb served on diced pita bread, and topped with chilli sauce, minted garlic yoghurt and cashew nuts.
It didn't appear in a great quantity as the other dishes, but the lamb was tender, and the nuts added crunch. My vegetarian moussaka ($20) was something of a disappointment. The beans, eggplant, potato and capsicum had reduced to a sort of tasty mush, and the rice was crisp. The tabouleh, on the other hand, was outstanding - deliciously sour, with a good balance of parsley and tomato.
Coffee was all we could manage after all that food, and Bill's Turkish coffee ($5) stood up to expectations. So did the spoon he rested in it. Get 'em in, feed 'em and get 'em out seems to be the philosophy at the Turkish Cafe. The staff don't quite hover, but they watch closely, and as soon as the last fork is down, the plates are gone.
The dishes are lined up in the kitchen, just waiting to be microwaved, and the rice has more than a passing acquaintance with that piece of kitchen equipment as well. That said, on the whole the food stands up to this cavalier treatment surprisingly well. It's worth a (quick) visit.
