Istanbul Mediterranean Cuisine & Bar — Restaurant in Tucson

This is an edit the owner decided to come up to me (I made my review before I left, as I usually do) and thanked me for giving him a one star review, because even though he had an issue with us, he told his the staff to still take care of us. I listened to him, and went to explain why I left my review (him cutting off and over talking my grandfather) He cut me off and continued to push his view. I want to clarify that my issue was not with the food or staff. Simply the way the owner treated my grandfather. He made a fair point however, that the staff was nice and polite, and I don't want him to reflect on them so I am updating my review from one to three stars. End of edit

The food was pretty good, which makes me a little sad to write the rest of the review.

The owner was extremely rude and argumentive. My grandfather called into make a reservation for my grandmother's birthday on Wednesday, and was the person on the phone confirmed the time and name, and told my grandfather there would be a table. When we arrived, we were told that the restaurant didn't take reservations, which started a small conflict, with the owner and my grandfather arguing for a bit. We were seated (right next to a booth with a reserved plaque), but the owner did not want to leave it alone. He made several stops at the table to say he didn't take reservations, and continuously talked over my grandfather, until my grandfather said can you just sush and listen to what I'm trying to say. The owner then got louder and said you need to respect me, and my grandfather said you need to respect me too. The owner walked away again, only to come back with a business cards saying if you can show me in your phone where you called this number, I will apologize. We found the call log, but the owner said "you told me you call yesterday, but the log says Wednesday, so.." and continued to try and argue with my grandfather. My grandfather eventually said I don't care, and dropped it. The rest of the meal was spent with the owner glaring at our table, while we sat across from a booth, with a "resevered" plaque on it. They did give my grandmother free baklava for her birthday,...

The reason that it's 2 stars instead of one is that our server was very nice and very fast with the ordering. She came back to our table so many times that it only took us 20 minutes to eat, and it was in the middle of lunch hour so i was impressed. I took my family there yesterday for the first time and my food was really good. My girlfriend's food however was really gross; i switched plates with her because she was more hungry than i was that day. It was lemon chicken soup however there was very little chicken in it.. maybe a few table spoons of rubbery chicken at the bottom of the bowl. The soup itself was hard to eat so i opted for something else after one bite of broth and one bite of chicken. Mind you soup is usually stored in the kitchen in larger warmers for the day so i thought it might be no problem for them to switch it for another soup. I didnt want to pay for the lemon chicken soup but i would have taken no for an answer. I was very soft spoken with our server beacuse she was a great houst and i did not want to be pushy I simply asked our server if i could swap it out and sure enough she said it would be no problem to swap it for another soup. I told her any other soup would do just fine she suggested the lentil soup. She took the lemon soup back and immediatley returned with the lentil. It was great. Less than 10 minutes after i asked if i could exchange the soups, she brings us the wierdest-non-itemized reciept and silently puts it down and walks away. You could tell her mood had shifted. I looked at the bill for the first time after i had already paid.. i did the math in my head i was over charged. On the way out i asked her what had changed about my bill just having the one soup. She sadly said to me that she didnt realize that the owner was there that day and that when she went inside to grab our check he evidently stopped her and told her to charge us for both.. and then procceed to bring a bill with no items on it just one line with a total. I wasnt that hungry so if she had said no we cant give you another one i wouldnt have ordered...

I'm Turkish - American, and I assure you, this place does NOT serve Turkish food. Furthermore, it is not even good food. I'm embarrassed. There should be some moral standards on restaurants when it's come to claim something but do something else. That is exactly why I'm writing this comment. We ordered Iskender Kebab which is beef and sometimes lamb mixture that cooks on a vertical rotisserie. It has to be (!) rib, rib-eye for the cut of beef due to its correct fat amount and tenderness, and if it's being used, it should be lamb leg for the same reasons. Whole idea of this type of kebab is to get super fine flakes of meat that one side cooked from the flame and the other side is medium after being "shaved" from the rotisserie. Imagine shawarma but superiorly thin and tender and only one side is browned and crisped if it make sense. But, unfortunately, we get very thick "chopped" pieces of tough/chewy/greasy bad version of Carna Asada meat that cooked on a pan or a skillet until its completely tough and unpleasant. The type of kebab needs to be served on top of Pide bread which is spongy - a bit thick Flatbread and there should be really good tomato sauce on top of the meat. They, unfortunately used store bought/machine make pita or something that was super thin and too tough to absorb any meat juice. The tomato sauce was not tomato sauce but a tomato paste sauce that was so unpleasant. Also, at the end, it should be some boiling hot browned butter that added after served by a server at the table. Of course they didn't such a thing, instead the tomato sauce was super greasy and had zero butter taste. An other shock was that they - who knows why - served that meat with green beans. Like what?? Excuse me, what cuisine is that? As a Turkish person it hurts me to see this failure of...