B
bingoluther
Guest
The tastes of Turkey in the depths of Etobicoke
By JOHN ALLEMANG
Saturday, June 28, 2003 - Page L9
E-mail this Article
Print this Article
Advertisement
Anatolia
5112 Dundas St. W., Toronto. 416-207-0596. Not accessible to people in wheelchairs. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $60.
Our server trained as a journalist in Turkey, and her powers of observation remain acute. So does her skepticism.
"I knew you weren't going to finish those," she says, surveying the mounds of food remaining on our main-course plates. "You ate so much of the first courses."
But of course we did. How could we have done otherwise? The appetizers -- if that's the right word to use for food you eat too much of -- are so inviting that the 18-year-old in our group was inspired to cry out: "The Anatolia has the best food in Toronto."
You'd get an argument from people who think that the best food in Toronto shouldn't be in the wilds of Etobicoke, or permit a bill in double figures, or have, at last count, five dishes based on eggplant. And admittedly for anyone used to Susur's restless ingenuity, there's a certain sameness to the ingredients and the garnishes at the Anatolia that might lead to intense world-weariness in about the year 2016.
But so far gastronomic ennui is not a big problem, especially now that we know the foam boxes will come to the rescue of our leftover kebabs and crepes. Again and again, we drive out Dundas Street West searching for the little strip mall before we get lost in the world of overpasses, hoping that this time we can park outside the adjacent vacuum-cleaner store without causing too much unneighbourly friction.
The negotiations started in the car -- can we have the fried-eggplant appetizer called patlican kizartmasi, should we go for a mixed plate of first courses or order one by one, what about the shredded-wheat and cheese dessert that you have to order in advance before you discover that you'll be too full to appreciate it?
But once we arrive at this welcoming Turkish version of a taverna -- red-checked tablecloths, climbing vines, brilliant turquoise ceramics on the wall, energetically mournful music -- we find a way to yield on most points. The fried eggplant is compulsory eating, both for the soft, melting flesh of the sweet eggplant rounds and the tart yogurt sauce that washes over them. It makes a perfect dip for the airy Turkish bread. The succulent grapevine leaves, which elsewhere can seem too dense or over-processed, here have a delicacy of touch that allows you to pick out the flavours of the currants and pine nuts blended in with the rice filling.
The Turkish take on hummus and on baba ghannoush are both exemplary, and the reddish-orange lentil soup is a good one if you don't mind a little tomato lifting the worthy flavours of the pulses. But lately we've been more partial to a spicy dip of chopped tomato, green peppers and onion called domates esmezi (there are pronunciation guides on the menu, including soop-uf-thu-dey), and a small pan-Mediterranean salad of resilient Romano beans, chopped carrots and soft cubes of potato that seem to have absorbed all the garlic and green olive oil a heart could desire.
As each of us is working out how to give the other two an equal share of these dishes while still ensuring that each of us gets the most, our server brings us sigara boregi, the cigar-shaped borek rolls that aren't much more than bits of feta wrapped in crispy pastry but taste glorious 30 seconds from the fryer.
We could stop there, and probably should stop there and sometimes do stop there if it's lunch and we still entertain hopes of accomplishing something else in the day. At the very least, we should take a long pause, and enjoy the wonderfully mixed clientele of small children clapping their hands at the sight of long-cooked doner kebab shards, vintage Etobicokians reliving their Black Sea cruise over glasses of Thracian white and the twentysomething girls-night-out crowd in their headscarves and stiletto heels.
But even at this stage of the dinner, the main courses look doable. Our server knows better. We nibble gamely on the triangular spinach-and-feta crepes, enjoying the griddle taste on the exterior as much as the melting spinach and cheese inside. The moist, airy ground-beef kebabs partnered with the formidable hunks of skewered, barely grilled eggplant win the meat-eaters' praise -- why can't we give our hamburgers this much flavour? And the ground lamb and beef balls wrapped in phyllo, topped with a little tomato sauce, dusted with pistachio and meant to be dipped in the formidable thickened yogurt that as much as anything is the house specialty? They will make a delicious breakfast and lunch, tomorrow.
Dessert arrives, a hot metal platter of freshly baked shredded-wheat pastry called kunefe. We've previously enjoyed the home-made baklava (which you can preview if you wander back by the kitchen) and a bouncy lemon-scented milk pudding called keskul, and we've even longed for a little more pine sap in the tavuk gogusu pudding. But always we come back to this showpiece dessert, a heaped bird's nest of crisp pastry threads that still seems to be sizzling in its sweet syrup when it reaches the table --and if you find the savoury bottom layer of elastic melted cheese to be a little strange, well then you've been eating too many standard-issue chocolate cakes downtown.
By JOHN ALLEMANG
Saturday, June 28, 2003 - Page L9
E-mail this Article
Print this Article
Advertisement
Anatolia
5112 Dundas St. W., Toronto. 416-207-0596. Not accessible to people in wheelchairs. Dinner for two with wine, tax and tip, $60.
Our server trained as a journalist in Turkey, and her powers of observation remain acute. So does her skepticism.
"I knew you weren't going to finish those," she says, surveying the mounds of food remaining on our main-course plates. "You ate so much of the first courses."
But of course we did. How could we have done otherwise? The appetizers -- if that's the right word to use for food you eat too much of -- are so inviting that the 18-year-old in our group was inspired to cry out: "The Anatolia has the best food in Toronto."
You'd get an argument from people who think that the best food in Toronto shouldn't be in the wilds of Etobicoke, or permit a bill in double figures, or have, at last count, five dishes based on eggplant. And admittedly for anyone used to Susur's restless ingenuity, there's a certain sameness to the ingredients and the garnishes at the Anatolia that might lead to intense world-weariness in about the year 2016.
But so far gastronomic ennui is not a big problem, especially now that we know the foam boxes will come to the rescue of our leftover kebabs and crepes. Again and again, we drive out Dundas Street West searching for the little strip mall before we get lost in the world of overpasses, hoping that this time we can park outside the adjacent vacuum-cleaner store without causing too much unneighbourly friction.
The negotiations started in the car -- can we have the fried-eggplant appetizer called patlican kizartmasi, should we go for a mixed plate of first courses or order one by one, what about the shredded-wheat and cheese dessert that you have to order in advance before you discover that you'll be too full to appreciate it?
But once we arrive at this welcoming Turkish version of a taverna -- red-checked tablecloths, climbing vines, brilliant turquoise ceramics on the wall, energetically mournful music -- we find a way to yield on most points. The fried eggplant is compulsory eating, both for the soft, melting flesh of the sweet eggplant rounds and the tart yogurt sauce that washes over them. It makes a perfect dip for the airy Turkish bread. The succulent grapevine leaves, which elsewhere can seem too dense or over-processed, here have a delicacy of touch that allows you to pick out the flavours of the currants and pine nuts blended in with the rice filling.
The Turkish take on hummus and on baba ghannoush are both exemplary, and the reddish-orange lentil soup is a good one if you don't mind a little tomato lifting the worthy flavours of the pulses. But lately we've been more partial to a spicy dip of chopped tomato, green peppers and onion called domates esmezi (there are pronunciation guides on the menu, including soop-uf-thu-dey), and a small pan-Mediterranean salad of resilient Romano beans, chopped carrots and soft cubes of potato that seem to have absorbed all the garlic and green olive oil a heart could desire.
As each of us is working out how to give the other two an equal share of these dishes while still ensuring that each of us gets the most, our server brings us sigara boregi, the cigar-shaped borek rolls that aren't much more than bits of feta wrapped in crispy pastry but taste glorious 30 seconds from the fryer.
We could stop there, and probably should stop there and sometimes do stop there if it's lunch and we still entertain hopes of accomplishing something else in the day. At the very least, we should take a long pause, and enjoy the wonderfully mixed clientele of small children clapping their hands at the sight of long-cooked doner kebab shards, vintage Etobicokians reliving their Black Sea cruise over glasses of Thracian white and the twentysomething girls-night-out crowd in their headscarves and stiletto heels.
But even at this stage of the dinner, the main courses look doable. Our server knows better. We nibble gamely on the triangular spinach-and-feta crepes, enjoying the griddle taste on the exterior as much as the melting spinach and cheese inside. The moist, airy ground-beef kebabs partnered with the formidable hunks of skewered, barely grilled eggplant win the meat-eaters' praise -- why can't we give our hamburgers this much flavour? And the ground lamb and beef balls wrapped in phyllo, topped with a little tomato sauce, dusted with pistachio and meant to be dipped in the formidable thickened yogurt that as much as anything is the house specialty? They will make a delicious breakfast and lunch, tomorrow.
Dessert arrives, a hot metal platter of freshly baked shredded-wheat pastry called kunefe. We've previously enjoyed the home-made baklava (which you can preview if you wander back by the kitchen) and a bouncy lemon-scented milk pudding called keskul, and we've even longed for a little more pine sap in the tavuk gogusu pudding. But always we come back to this showpiece dessert, a heaped bird's nest of crisp pastry threads that still seems to be sizzling in its sweet syrup when it reaches the table --and if you find the savoury bottom layer of elastic melted cheese to be a little strange, well then you've been eating too many standard-issue chocolate cakes downtown.