Sultan Ahmet Turkish Cuisine — Restaurant in Mississauga

Heard about this place through IG recently and finally made it here. I loved that there's quite a lot of variety of food to choose from on the menu and that it tasted authentic, but I didn't like the fact that some of the items we wanted were either not available or sold out. It's best not to have it on the menu imo if it's not going to be available in-house. Restaurant seems to be understaffed.

Restaurant is pretty big, has lots of seating arrangement & parking space outside. You can smell the flavours and the deliciousness from outside. Restaurant was packed when we went, despite it being a weekday. Second time we went, restaurant was too packed to accommodate. They stated it would be a 2 hour wait. They didn't accept takeout orders (though a friend managed to get takeout a few hours prior, and that took at least 50 min wait time before the takeout was ready).

Some prices are quite high but similar to the other Turkish restaurants in the GTA. One item I didn't see on the menu is my favourite, a signature in Turkish cuisine - Ali Nazik kebab.

We ordered a vegetarian pide (which was bigger than I expected). It's great for sharing and makes a good appetizer. Our server did a good job, but didn't appreciate being pushy over posting a "5 star review." I'm always honest in my feedback for restaurant reviews and though I have nothing negative to say about the quality of the food, the pushiness for the 5 star review did annoy me and I didn't find it professional at all.

The lamb kebab, iskender kebab & chicken shish were all delicious. The food is flavourful, portion is enough for one person only. Pide is good for sharing.

Though we waited a while the first time, there was seating near the door and something to keep kids busy.

The trilece made a great dessert as well. It wasn't too sweet.

Some feedback: just need better knives that cuts easily. I'd love to come back to try other menu items. Customer service just need slight improvement, as well as better communication with customers. Time for food to get ready also needs some improvement. They also tried to fit a lot of tables which doesn't give enough spacing between the tables. Feels a little too close to others.

Note: we paid around $60-70 because of their grand opening promo, but if you get the same amount of dishes we got, do expect to pay around $100 or more.

We went back for a second time. The food was amazing. Service a little slow. It took a lot of time to get our food, just like the first time. They added the Ali nazik on the menu and had all menu items we wanted available but once again came the same server to push us to write a 5 star review which we find very unprofessional. Food is great though and the chef also came back. Quality of food is good but professionalism from certain (not all) staff really really needs improvement.

They definitely need to work on their professionalism and customer service.

Update: every single time I think, "k let me give them another chance," I find something else go wrong. Customer service is still terrible. I called for a takeout order only to arrive at the store (they said about 25 minutes for it to be ready), and be told to sit down and wait. I actually ended up coming a bit over 40 minutes later because I knew they'd need the extra time. To no surprise, the servers are under stress, have no idea what's going on and ONLY ONE person takes care of takeout orders. Funnily enough, she asked me to sit and wait because the order wasn't ready. I checked and realized it's been about an hour since I called in my order and was shocked to see that it's not ready. Turns out, the order was in the corner and sitting there. When she figured it out, she had to make me wait another 10-15 minutes before settling the bill because she needed another staff member to acknowledge in settling the bill..

Definitely never coming back at this point, especially since many things have gone wrong the other times I've tried giving it another chance, from not finding a seat and being told no reservations, to poor customer...

Took my BFF for a very belated bday dinner. She heard the food was amazing so we took the chance! I was afraid to come because usually when a restaurant says they serve authentic Turkish food, it doesn’t taste like the food in Türkiye! But some of the food here did remind me of Türkiye!

If you come to this restaurant on a weekend, be aware that they only reserve for 1.5 hours because they are very busy. And they are busy for a reason!

The staff was welcoming and friendly. Our waiter Yasir came by very quickly after we sat down as most people know what they want. As it was our first time there, we needed recommendations! He told us what others order and what he likes as well!

We got the mixed meze plate to start. It comes with loafs of Turkish bread so pillowy soft that we couldn’t stop eating it! Usually they bring 2, but somehow we got 4! And each of the dips were really good! But be careful because the bread can fill you up quickly! But you just can’t stop eating it!

My BFF got the pineapple mojito. There’s no alcohol in these drinks, so we were able to enjoy.

We also ordered the cheese and spinach pide which was huge! It was something else we could have probably eaten on its own!

My BFF ordered the chef’s mix grill dinner. The portion was very large but well balanced. The best part was the Veal shish kebab! So juicy and yummy! I “sampled” her dinner and the veal reminded me of Türkiye!

I ordered the chicken doner dinner. It did not disappoint! But it was nearly impossible with the large portions for us to finish our plates.

So we packed up half of it to share with family at home.

Last, they brought us complimentary tea and dessert (they didn’t have the dessert we wanted so provided a complimentary dessert instead). We enjoyed the cold Turkish baklava. It was more like three little cakes and they were a perfect way to end the night!

Yasir our server was easily available to help. The table staff were very good as well. Thanks to the south Asian gentleman who brought us take out dishes so we could split up our food to take home, and who quickly took away our dirty dishes. He, Yasir and the rest of the staff were just so friendly and helpful.

For anyone saying the staff isn’t friendly enough, I think you get what you give. My friend and I are always friendly, smiling and treating everyone with kindness and respect and it’s rare that we don’t get that back. Our server saw me turning around looking for the washroom and discreetly showed me the way just because he was paying attention to his customers. Even the servers for other customers were kind to us.

We will be going back to bring the husbands and the kids. We know they will enjoy the food! You need...

I came here because of all the positive google reviews but left underwhelmed. We went on a Wednesday evening when it was not particularly busy. During the ordering process, our Server informed us we can't have tap water and that we'd have to order a beverage. Personally I find it a bit annoying that Sultan Ahmet is trying to strongarm me into buying a bottle of water for $1.50, that they paid $0.12 for. (the server never disclosed any of the bottled water proceeds would go to charity as indicated in other reviews or that there was any other free water option). But I went along and bought a beverage, your restaurant, your rules.

We ordered the doner plate and chicken kebob plate. First thing we noticed were the french fries. On each plate, the fries were a single fused mass, all of them were stuck together into a blob the size of my fist (see attached pics), they were so stuck together that separating them caused the fries to rip. Also, the temperature of the fries was extremely low. The fries were cold 3 minutes after my plates arrived. I'm not sure how fries so obviously screwed up could make it to a customer other than to assume whoever assembled my plates didn't care. In fact, the temperature of all the food on my plates was on the low side as if they had been sitting around awhile before being served to me. I could have asked for replacement food, but my order took over 25+ minutes to arrive (while people around me who ordered after us, received their food first), but frankly the whole experience was getting dragged out, and I didn't have the time.

I appreciated the warm service (even if it was slow), that the owner visited our table and the tea at the end of the meal, but frankly, the food simple did not measure up.

Update: Based on the owner's feedback below I did reach out to them and the restaurant manager called me. After speaking to him, I discovered that in fact, they don't give you a "generous gift card" as indicated below. You have to go in and order a mean and they'll and give you a discount at the end. They wouldn't tell me what the discount was. Maybe I'm splitting hairs but a gift card is different than a discount. I can't be bothered to take them up on their mystery offer. And I took off one extra star for wasting...