Turkish Delight — Restaurant in Alaska

Tl:dr food was pretty good but you have to like that style of food/atmosphere/ and have good people with you to get maximum enjoyment. Very Instagram friendly!!!

Beware mandatory 20% tip with a 5+ person party.

Long version: This is a "turkish food" type of place (think lots of lamb related dishes, there is also beef, chicken and vegetable options. The online menu goes into painstaking detail about gluten, allergens and dairy content.

The food was pretty good (some people I went with said their food was not great, but mine was fine. I got the Sultan's Delight and apple tea, one of the other people with me got the same and the other one got the dönner.

I was told the donner (23$) (think gyro deconstructed with rice and a spicy pepper) was not bad but the meat tasted "reheated" whatever that means...

My dish, the Sultans delight (23$) was beef stewed in tomatoes over a bed of eggplant puree with a side of butter cooked rice and zingy onion salad with a piece of grilled sourdough and a charred half pepper. Individual scores: beef 4/5(was a little stringy...), eggplant 5/5, onion salad 5/5, rice 4/5 (was good flavor bug a little dry for me...), sourdough (fine, I don't think it's made there, so no score), charred pepper(I gave up on it because the other person with me said it blew his head off and I am not great with spice.)

I also go the apple tea (4$) and it was served on very pretty plate with cute utensils. The cup is 3 inches tall and like 1.5 inches diameter. Pictures make it look bigger, but it was very tasty, (think hot apple cider with light tea) with very pretty presentation. Very Instagram bait, in a doll house way. I had a refill as well.

People next to us got turkish coffee and it seemed to be very thick and strong. It came in pretty blue cups (4$, 1inch diameter, 1 inch tall) with a small piece of locum on side, the coffee was very thick at the bottom "like it's supposed to be" based on the conversation of people next to us...

On Saturday evening the wait was 10-30 min for small parties (I waited for 12 min with a party of 3) but there was a party of like 10 people who were told to come back in an hour, and they still had to wait outside for 10-20 min allegedly...

The place is very colorful and seems to be trendy Instagram baity. The bathrooms are really good, Clean decorated and elegant. Service was pretty fast, food was neat, wait staff were polite. The menu is available online, so you can look around before you get there to see what...

Seeing the reviews I was stoked to try this place. As a takeout, I ordered an appetizer and two dinners for my other half and myself as we were in Anchorage for appointments on the 22nd for our daughters appointments the following day. I like to assume that maybe I caught the business on a bad night and I'd be willing to try again, but I was very disappointed. The appetizer, Antep Cheese Platter was extremely oily, beyond salty, and there was two sprigs of topping on it. My other half's meal was the Donër- the meat was very dry as if it had been sitting for some time under a warmer after being shaved. I ordered Tavuk Adana which the meat was VERY good and the only reason I am giving the reviews 3 stars, I will say. With that said- our rice was TERRIBLE. It tasted like Uncle Ben's box rice that had been sitting in a warmer all day. I am Iranian, and as we all know- food quality is everything for us. I guess it was my fault for assuming basmati would be used, or at the very least a decent long grain rice. I had assumed with Antep it would be in water to pull the extra salts the cheese has. I was very disappointed to see the state of my husband's Donër and ended up letting him have my Tavuk Adana but neither of us finished our rice after trying it and the amount of rice in our to go vs what I had seen on plates at tables was noticeably different. When I went to pick up the food 20 minutes after ordering, the gentleman that took my order and handed me my food didn't seem in the best of moods, which I get- we all have those days, but as I am driving back to my hotel with the worst headache and exhausted, I realized there was no plasticware nor any napkins. Rather than turning around I just stopped at Walgreens and purchased some. I wish I had taken pictures but I had such a horrible headache and I just wanted to get through the meal so I could take my medication and lay down. Anyway. For $60 take out and me leaving a $10 cash tip on a takeout I was extremely disappointed with all but the Tavuk Adan. I hate to leave such a review for a neighboring peoples business, but it definitely needed to be noted and again, I would like to think it was just an off night and that one day if I decide to try the food again that it would be a 180° from...

I want to say it’s somewhere between 3-3.5.

I really wanted to love this place but I hope they keep improving so that it’ll be the Turkish place to go to.

We got: the Meze platter with hummus, ezme (mashed tomato dip), dolma (rice in grape leaf), sigara borek (feta in phyllo), mucver (pan fried zucchini). This was $35 and did not include any naan which we had to order for an extra $2. I think $35 is easily overpriced for this plate. I know it’s a lot of work for platters but if it’s at that pricing, you should at least include 2 full sized homemade naan. The naan we did order on the side did not amount to even a whole naan at most other places. The hummus could have been bumped up a notch with grilled garlic or some seasoned oil or something— it was nothing special. I did like the sigara borek and my partner loved the zucchini patties. Pirzola (grilled lamb w/ rice) - for the most expensive entree plate at the restaurant it really missed the mark. The rice was great and I would say was one of my favorite parts of the whole meal. The lamb was cooked okay but needed salt. The salad was missing acid (maybe some citrus?). sultan’s delight (slow cooked beef) this was my favorite dish and nothing to change here except to provide 2-3 slices of bread. We ordered rice on the side to eat with this one.

Service: Pacing could be better. Everything all came out at once. Appetizer and entrees, so the entrees got cold by the time we got to them. Waitress basically just got our order, dropped off our food and then didn’t check in on us afterward. Another server/busboy had to flag her down but just got us our check instead.

Overall, I’d say there’s a bit of refinement that needs to happen here. You can absolutely keep the price points but you need to make the customer feel like it’s worth it. And it could very well be just a bit more attention to detail/seasoning and to add some cheap bread/carb to make the dish...