New Star Kebab Family Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

(4.5 stars) It’s Friday night and Auburn is teeming with people. This Western Sydney suburb has a lot more high-rise than I remember from nigh on thirty years ago, and the cultural diversity is wider with Chinese, Turkish, Lebanese, Nepalese and Indian ancestry making up the suburb's top five. Weathering both the upwards growth and the cultural shift, New Star Kebab Family Restaurant has been serving the good people of Auburn for forty years. “In the past forty years, we have become part of Australian cuisine,” owner Atilla Tok explains. The multicultural crowd dining at his busy restaurant are testament to the fact that eating kebab is now as Australian as the ANZAC biscuit.

Demanding your attention even more loudly than the store’s primary coloured neon, is the mouthwatering aroma of charcoal cooking. It’s emanating from a glass booth where a smiling young lad expertly maneuvers kebabs over smoking hot coals using bread rather than tongs. Watching the bread picking up all the meaty juices, I’m pleased to see it make its way onto the Mixed Shish Plate ($27) along with your choice of three different kebab – chicken, lamb and adana.

Dining with a group in the outdoor plastic tent that expands the kebab shop’s seating to about a hundred, we’re treated to some fancier plating that sees three mixed plates worth of kebabs arranged in the round with salads, rice and well-charred tomatoes. The produce is top notch, from the premium quality meats, all the way to the non-floury tomatoes.

Picked up in still-warm Turkish bread, the hunks of lamb back strap and leg meat are tender and delicious. The chicken kebab is moist and well-charred, perfect against Turkish yoghurt garlic dip. Roasted chilli sauce and the orange chilli dip in the platter of Mixed Dips ($10) keeps things lively as we mow our way through the meats, cooling our mouths on mugs of house-made Lemonade ($3).

Fine curls of doner kebab meat join a mix of bread, tomato-based sauce and yoghurt, for New Star’s Iskender Kebab ($18), which is then baked in the oven. Here this dish is slightly modified from the Turkish original, which would normally see cold yoghurt added to the hot plate after cooking. Tok explains that his Australian audience wasn’t that keen on the hot-meets-cold sensation.

While New Star Kebab do make traditional pizzas, they’re listed way down the back end of the menu board for a reason – you should be eating Turkish pide instead! Opt-in for egg on the Ispanakli Pide ($21/large) with mozzarella, fresh spinach and fetta, it elevates this crisp, fresh pide into a satisfying, thing of beauty against a moderate squeeze of lemon.

Kiymali Pide ($21) is given a fresh-parsley hit against ground lamb, onion, tomato and vegetables, and eats much lighter than other versions of this dish I’ve tried. I quite liked it against the babaganush dip, made here using baked rather than char-grilled eggplants, giving it a stronger eggplant flavour.

Setting New Star’s gozleme apart from the ubiquitous market stall ones you’ll find just about everywhere, is a team of older Turkish ladies who roll the dough out bigger and thinner than is possible to achieve in a market setting. The resulting Ispanakli Gozleme ($10) is wonderful, with crisp English spinach wrapped inside thin flaky pastry that's turned golden on the grill.

Tok’s philosophy of using good quality produce and not cutting corners sets New Star Kebab apart from other Turkish kebab restaurants I have visited. With a constant flow of people that continues throughout my meal, it’s pretty clear New Star doesn’t need reviews like this one to popularise their business, but I felt compelled to tell you about...

Warning: Sold raw chicken and rotting food! After being out of area shopping and at the end of a long day of fasting we decided to order take away and head back home to my eagerly awaiting and hungry family members. It was very busy and orders took possibly a good 30 minutes of waiting then arrived home another 45 minutes after that. We ordered 2 mixed shish plates, a New star special pizza, Doner kebab plate and a range of yogurt dips individually packaged. Much to our dismay, there were inconsistencies with the cooked chicken, one plate was severely burnt and the other containing severly undercooked and raw chicken. Our pizza contained old and dry leftover kebab meat which tasted much like something that had been left exposed to open air for hours. There was also an odd taste in some layers of the sausages which left me questioning the freshness of that too. But nothing came close to the the yogurt dips that came expired. To the point that they were fermenting. The trapped air bubbles causing the container to puff out of shape. The intensity of it literally bent the lid outwards permanently the way it would if you place plastic over a flame. The yogurt had to have been expired for a considerable time at their store.. in other words, they hadn't just expired today! The dips were what we longed to have most and were the first thing we put into our mouths on entering the house. There were children eating this food and I'm utterly disgusted we had to wait over an hour past breaking fast time to discover this cringe-worthy and sickening food we were given. We've been coming here for years and crave to eat from here from time to time but after a year of absence finding the huge inflation of prices since our last visits, what costed us over $100 today had costed in the the $70-80 range for the same order. Putting money aside though, as I already knew about the price increases prior to coming, I'm more hugely disappointed with the unacceptable food standards and will be looking elsewhere for turkish food after this experience. Even more worrying, we first asked for tzaziki dip with chilli dip in a combined container, then after paying for the order the guy instead filled the container with chilli dip saying the cucumber dip was off. The idea that he knew something was wrong with the yogurt dips and yet allowed us to take them home knowingly is inexcusable! Perhaps I should have known better than to buy from them at a peak time of the day, nevertheless, it leaves you wondering where their priorities lie and how often they gamble with people's safety for profit sake. Buy at...

What's not to love about a place like this. Great value, tasty food and servings so large and generous that you’ll be full for a week.
New Star is located in the heart of Auburn's main strip serving up a range of Turkish food for the masses. Look out for the street frontage windows, one showcasing the huge pizzas and pide, the other showcasing the skewers cooking over hot coals, doing a great job of enticing passers by.
We knew this place was going to be good, the fact that it was extremely busy is no doubt a dead give away. New Star Kebab is a family run restaurant, and a local institution, which has been run by Atilla Tok for over 25 years (the family for 40) and the family consider food being like art, both of which the staff are passionate about.
All products are Halal, with produce sourced fresh from small farmers and meat manufacturers to ensure you are in for a high quality Turkish feed.
We arrived ready for a Turkish feast and to say the potions are huge, is an understatement. A basket of freshly baked Turkish Bread is complimentary and great for dipping or mopping up any sauce. We had this with a colourful mixed dips platter, full of classics; Babaganush, hummus, Tzatziki and a spicy dip, all very tasty and boy was the spicy dip packing plenty of heat.
The Iskender dip plate is similar to a snack pack, but with a mountain of fine slices of Doner kebab meat served on a layer of Turkish bread, then smothered with yoghurt and their special red sauce. So saucy and oh so good!
Our favorite was the mixed shish plate, with meat nicely cooked over open flame, infusing it with a lovely charcoal flavour; chicken, lamb and beef served with tomato, red cabbage, onion, roast hot chili, lemon and more Turkish bread.
The Falafel plate with salad, a great healthy choice and one for the vegetarians. The are perfect, light and fluffy inside and a crispy outer core.
The Sucuklu pide (Turkish sausage, egg, cheese) always a go to and the New Star version is up there with the best, with plenty of topping and the ever tasty sucuklu sausage in particular.
New Star have something for everyone's favourite Gozleme, Turkish savoury crepes.
They have all your other key menu items from vine leaves to kofte, Adana kebab plates, and doner kebab rolls
We loved our visit for its great value, tasty food and servings so generous, you'll need to bring the family....