<\/a>Istanbul combo - chicken, lamb, kofte, and doner kebabs, lamb chops, peppers, tomatoes, rice<\/p><\/div>\n
All the grilled meats, however, were well seasoned and flavorful. I especially liked the kofte, which are meatballs made with ground lamb and beef mixed with Turkish spices. The doner kebab was wonderful as well, which is thin slices of lamb shaved from a spit. The outside of the meat was crusty and crispy, and I ended up making mini gyros for myself by wrapping the meat in some pita bread. Again there was too much food, even though we stuffed ourselves silly, and we ended up taking home about half of the combo.<\/p>\n
Overall we both thought the food at Istanbul Caf\u00e9 was well spiced and seasoned properly, but preparation-wise it suffered a bit. The lamb and chicken kebabs were tasty but tough and overcooked, and even the kofte was a bit gristly, surprisingly. Service, however, was efficient and attentive, although the restaurant was pretty empty when we were there. They wrapped up our leftovers right away and even threw in some extra pita bread for us, which I thought was a nice touch. The no alcohol policy presents us with a bit of pickle though, as we like to enjoy a nice bottle of wine when we go out for dinner. The resolution to that problem is to have the food delivered and eat it at home. It\u2019s available for order on Seamless Web, and I think that\u2019s what we\u2019ll do the next time we have a craving for good Turkish food.<\/p>\n
Before we left the restaurant, they took us on a tour of the outdoor garden area in the back, which is really pretty. It looked like a nice place to hang out and smoke a hookah, if that\u2019s your thing. The restaurant also offers an extensive array of desserts, which we were to full to try but some of the pastries in the glass display cases looked amazing. Turkish teas and coffees are available as well, and it\u2019s a nice place to just sit and relax. The d\u00e9cor inside the restaurant is also interesting, with low tables and chairs and intricate lamps hanging all around. I definitely recommend checking it out sometime.<\/p>\n
Istanbul Cafe<\/a>
\n325 West 57th St. between 8th and 9th Ave.
\nNew York, NY <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As recommended by Silva, Josh and I decided to try out Istanbul Caf\u00e9 the last time we had a craving for Turkish food. Coincidentally, we ran into Felipe and Silva on our way to the restaurant, and Silva offered up particular dishes that she liked (the chopped tomato salad dip, the kofte, and the shepherd\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[134,169,3,167],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2762,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2757\/revisions\/2762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twofatbellies.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}