Sultan Turkish Restaurant, Bussorah Street

While it may be that this vicinity is regarded as touristy, it is also the only enclave we have for Turkish/Middle Eastern food. That being said, most of the restaurants are clones of one another offering minor variations of the same dishes.

We ended up in the heart of it (30 Bussorah Street) because I came across something I wanted to try. While the usual modus operandi traversing this street is to put on a glass eye, weave and evade the touts that hawk "the best Turkish food in town", I today...acquiesced with the server at Sultan Turkish Restaurant. 

Started with a sweet chilled ayran to beat the evening humidity. Albeit not so successfully because humidity > chilled ayran. I liked the ayran though. If anyone was wondering, it's a yoghurt beverage very much like lassi.

A tabbouleh for my feeble efforts at including some fibre and greens into the meal which I was quite sure would otherwise include little to no fibre and greens. This one's a bit sour.

I've only gotten acquainted with mandi in recent years. I've either been not aware of their availability or the dish has only picked up steam locally in current times. They're an Arabic spiced rice dish often with meat - not dissimilar to briyani.

This one was with lamb shank. The rice was delicious. The first thing that came to mind was the ouzi we previously had at Kazbar. Pretty sure they tasted similar. Lamb was fall off the bone tender. Liked the soup on the side which had a pretty distinct flavour from the rendered fat of lamb. 

What was poorly done were the grilled chilli/tomato. They were raw under the skin. They weren't so much grilled as they were burnt.

I did mention liking the ayran. Here's another mug of gratification.

The dish I came for was their ciger sis/ciğer şiş - a kebab of lamb livers and beef fat. The latter interspersed between cubes lamb liver. Hell yeah this was delicious with the flatbread! 👍🏼 

Kunefe was also awesome. Crispy on the outside with the savoury cheese on the inside under the blanket of sweet creaminess. This one came with goat's milk ice cream.