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  • Gimme More Turkey

    GIMME MORE TURKEY
    By Naomi Wise

    San Diego Reader
    Wednesday, July 1, 2009

    Pasha drew my eye with an ad in this paper, including a coupon for
    a freebie appetizer platter. Hmm...a new bargain destination? Worth
    trying? I scurried to the website and found that the restaurant
    wasn't just another generic Mediterranean eatery but specifically
    Turkish. Now that's something fresh! (There's also the charming
    Bird House Grill in Encinitas, and a doner-kebab joint downtown,
    but that's about it for Turkish, far as I know.) The menu revealed
    standard Middle Eastern dishes, but also several distinctly Turkish
    specialties I'd never encountered before - two salads, three entrees,
    a dessert. Good enough for a start. And this would be third in a
    row for an exploration of new or newish restaurants serving various
    global forms of "barbecue," after Southern and Japanese, and leading
    right in to July 4. Posse roundup time!

    Several of my friends have traveled in Turkey. They've come back raving
    about their trips but not so much about the food. Still, knowing a
    trifle about Turkish history, I'm curious about the cuisine. First
    off, Turks are not generic "Middle Easterners," even if they share a
    common religion in Islam. They don't speak Arabic (a Semitic language)
    but the totally different Turkish (a Ural-Altaic Turkic language,
    most closely related to Azeri and Uzbek). Their location and ecosystem
    tie them to Asia Minor (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc.), Persia,
    and the Adriatic Sea, rather than the Mediterranean Arab world -
    think snow, not sand.

    And when the Ottoman Empire swept through the rest of Asia Minor
    en route to Greece, its military fell in love with Armenian food
    (same as me) and scooped up large numbers of Armenians to serve as
    army cooks while they were conquering the world. Greece gained an
    infusion of fresh recipes from Armenia, shaping the Greek cuisine
    we know today, but traditional Greek dishes also gained worldwide
    currency, especially their ancient masterpiece of stuffed grape leaves
    - now best known by the Turkish word dolma. One end result of all
    this conquest was the settling of a huge Armenian population in the
    city of Izmir, which became the "cuisine capital" of Turkey, after a
    fashion, spreading its culinary influence (at least until the whole
    Turkish-Armenian thing went horribly tragic, as the empire rotted,
    but I'm not going to go into that in a restaurant review...). What
    other influences did the Turks pick up in their conquests and meld
    into their own cuisine? Inquiring minds want to know.

    When we arrived at Pasha, we found a medium-small room with dark
    tablecloths, paper napkins, walls painted a light terra cotta and
    hung with a spare but beautiful collection of Turkish handicrafts. The
    restaurant is owned by a youngish couple, the husband from Lebanon and
    the wife from Turkey. Both do some cooking and some serving. But the
    night we ate there, most of the Turkish dishes - the malatya (Turkish
    potato salad), the etli borek (meat pie), and the spinach borek - were
    all unavailable; they just hadn't been prepared for a midweek night.

    We began with the vegetarian meze platter, for which we had
    the coupon. Everything on it was very pleasant, especially the
    lively tabouli and the light, faintly smoky baba ghanoush. (A
    typo on the website spells it "Babagannosh," which sounds like
    Turkish/Russian-Yiddish for "Grandpa's getting a snack.") None of
    the appetizers on the platter seems uniquely Turkish, or in any way
    different from every other meze platter in town. Be sure to save some
    of the cacik (pronounced "jah-jik," the Turkish version of Greek
    tzatziki or Indian cucumber raita) and the garlic-yogurt sauce for
    your main courses, as dips for your grilled meats.

    We also ordered the Turkish Shepherd Salad (coban salatasi) -
    diced tomatoes amended by cukes, scallion, onions, parsley, and
    bell pepper in a lemon vinaigrette, topped with a light snowfall of
    feta cheese. The tomatoes are under a lot of pressure to perform in
    this dish, and sad to say, they didn't: They were nearly tasteless,
    hard supermarket-style globe tomatoes, and June is not yet their
    season. The dressing needed more acidity for "oomph" to compensate for
    their blandness. "This time of year," said Marty, "the only tomatoes
    worth anything are little ones, cherry or grape tomatoes." "Yeah,
    even if you leave the regular ones on the counter, they never ripen
    and sweeten," added the Lynnester. Oddly, the leftovers of this salad
    improved greatly during two nights in the fridge, allowing the dressing
    to soak in and saturate the veggies.

    The best of our entrees by far was a Turkish specialty, Ali Nazik. It
    features small, richly seasoned cubes of charbroiled beef served on a
    warm bed of tart, creamy patlican (pronounced "PAHT-lee-jahn") salad,
    mashed eggplant mixed with yogurt and plenty of garlic. It comes with
    grilled tomato and grilled slices of slightly spicy red pepper. It
    all works together, with a fine contrast between the chewy, salty
    meat and lush, garlicky eggplant. (The eggplant is also available
    separately on the meze list.) "I'd come back for this dish," said
    Lynne, who lives nearby, and probably will do just that.

    Shrimp kebabs came in second. The shrimps were well seasoned if quite
    salty, and reasonably tender. Like nearly all other entrees, they
    were accompanied by fluffy basmati rice, pita, hummus (standing in
    for the baba ghanoush promised on the menu with the seafood dishes),
    and the fine house salad, a lively mixture of greens, tomatoes, cukes,
    onions, and (in this plate alone) a few whole basil leaves.

    The lamb shish kebab was flavorful with a marinade and charring, but
    dry and rather tough. It set Marty, Dave, and me to reminiscing about
    Sayyat Nova, an exquisite Armenian restaurant in Greenwich Village,
    way back when I was a teen beatnik, thrilled to taste this new cuisine
    with my dad and stepmom. That restaurant's rendition had a subtle,
    garlic-perfused olive-oil marinade for large leg of lamb chunks charred
    outside but rosy inside. At Pasha, the chunks are smaller and cooked
    medium (pinky-brown) inside, and the marinade is more assertive,
    possibly, judging by the result, including an acidic, tenderizing
    component like lemon juice. "I think the meat's been marinated too
    long," said Dave. "The texture on the exterior, just under the char,
    is a bit mealy." "And the lamb doesn't have much lamb flavor," Marty
    observed. "I don't know whether that's because it's cooked too well
    done or if the lamb itself is lacking."

    Unable to fulfill our hopes of a borek, we asked the owner whether
    the gyro meat in the Iskender (doner) kebab plate was house-made
    or bought. Bought, alas. Instead, the owner persuaded us to try a
    shawarma. Because this is a newbie restaurant with not much volume
    yet, the traditional shawarma of a huge hunk of flesh rotating on a
    vertical spit has proven impractical. "Instead, I cut it in slices,
    so the delicious marinade goes all through the meat, then I charbroil
    the slices," he said. We chose beef shawarma over the alternative
    chicken breast, which dries out too easily. But the beef proved just
    as dry. "It's almost like jerky!" Lynne said. "You can't even taste
    the marinade, just the charring," said Dave. Dipping the slices in
    cacik or garlic sauce left over from the appetizer platter helped,
    but only a little.

    There are two desserts. The house-made baklava is flaky and nutty
    (with both pistachios and walnuts) but sparing on the honey syrup -
    much less sweet than standard versions. "I like this a lot," said
    Lynne. "It's not overwhelming." Kunafa is genuinely exotic, a large
    wedge-shaped pastry with delicate top and bottom crusts of crunchy
    farina flakes, sandwiching a filling of melted mild cheeses (mozzarella
    and Jack or Havarti, or another cheese of that ilk). It's topped with
    crumbled pistachios, lightly dressed with fragrant rosewater-scented
    sugar syrup, and is barely sweet at all. It's like a cheese course
    and a dessert all in one.

    The Turkish coffee was strong and a little bitter, with all the "mud"
    hiding at the bottom of the cup. It comes unsweetened. We stirred in
    sugar with our fork handles (no spoons provided - yeah, it's still
    a start-up).

    Bottom line: Pasha is indeed a bargain. With the coupon for a
    free appetizer platter, the bill came to $28 per person total,
    all inclusive. But I feel the restaurant isn't making the most of
    its greatest potential strength. Generic Middle Eastern restaurants
    are a dime a dozen, some cheaper than this and some offering easier
    parking. In order to compete, the Turkish dishes that distinguish
    Pasha from the crowd should be available all the time, and I'd also
    like to see more of them, if the Ali Nazik - outstanding hit of our
    dinner - is any example. Then there'd be a reason to come back over
    and over and explore what could be a unique menu. Hey, flaunt it if
    you've got it, baby!
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