Where once Akgun offered kebabs, now his menu features home cooking, sauteed lamb instead of grilled, stewed lamb instead of ground and skewered. “I’m trying to do Turkish home cooking,’’ he says, “what your mother does at home.’’
Piyaz salat is a white bean salad ($8) with remarkable flavor. He soaks canned beans in lemon juice and water to intensify the taste, then mixes them with more lemon, red onions for extra bite, parsley, and sumac, the ground red spice that makes everything better.
Eggplant comes many ways, sometimes with Akgun’s trademark bright red, light tomato sauce. It appears on izgara patlican ($6), grilled eggplant, baked with fresh white cheese and cubinal peppers. In patlican salad ($4), the vegetable is roasted and lemony, pureed with tahini, olive oil, and roasted red pepper. Most striking is sultan’s delight ($13.50, pictured), a dish of roasted, pureed eggplant mixed with a little cheddar, used as a base for morsels of tender, sauteed lamb.
The menu offers panini, which seems odd until the chef explains that, in Turkish, the word sounds like toast, and he thought customers would think it’s for breakfast. In fact, he’s making eggs in baking dishes, but the sandwich, too, could be breakfast, particularly pastirmali panini ($7.50), slices of pastrami sandwiched with tomatoes and melty cheese. Panini are cooked on homemade flatbread, another of his signature dishes. Before you order, it comes to the table fresh from the oven with a dish of garlicky red pepper puree. The oval-shaped bread has a slightly sweet, tender crumb.
End with Akgun’s winners from the sweet kitchen: baklava and rice pudding ($4.50), the milkiest, lightest, most aromatic version this side of the Bosphorus.
Mr. Akgun: Keep making your sunny food and stay put.
