Turkish times two

These thoughts always occur to me whenever I enter Cafe Istanbul in Decatur. Yet it never stops me from strolling past the front room, with its tables and chairs, and continuing on to the back. There are two dim chambers beyond, lairs of painted stucco, the walls crowded with fabric hangings and murals painted into alcoves, the floors covered in overlapping carpets like the inside of a tent. In the far room, people pass around hookahs; in the near one they settle into their low berths lining the walls, the floor open for belly dancers.

Atlanta isn’t a great Turkish restaurant town. If it were, I might want to provide context about what a grand cuisine Turkey has. I might talk about the courtly traditions of Istanbul, the seafood specialties and famous yellow figs of the Aegean coast, and the spicy zest of the fare from Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey, the province that has provided refuge to more than 200,000 displaced Syrians. I’d surely try and pad this article with food memories from a vacation.

But Turkish restaurants here reflect a simpler reality. They trade in dips and spreads, kebobs and salads, hookahs and belly dancers. They offer simple food, a warm welcome and an hour or two spent in an enveloping atmosphere that takes you away from your daily life.

There are just a few Turkish dining spots, here and there, but two that seem to matter most these days. One is Cafe Istanbul, which has opened one spinoff in Kennesaw and has another coming in May to Alpharetta. The other is Cafe Agora, which has opened a second location in Midtown and recently moved its original Buckhead location down the street to a larger and grander space.

The original outpost of Cafe Istanbul, I think, has the most charm of the bunch. True, the treacherous parking lot suggests a fender bender waiting to happen, and the highway-side location amid auto-body shops and defunct car dealerships doesn’t exactly say “dining destination.”

But it’s bit of an oasis, its door a portal into a different world. It’s a grand choice for young families early in the evening, large groups later on, and couples whenever the mood beckons. Vegetarians enjoy a wide variety of choices. Ladies out on a girlfriends night drink pastel martinis. Cheapskates can order $2 pints of a special Turkish-style Cafe Istanbul draft lager that the waiter describes as tasting like Coors Light. He’s right.

What to order?

There are choices, but as I’ve found with other local Turkish restaurants, only one true path. Start with the chef’s special meze platter — an assortment of all the dips and spreads served with wonderful za’atar-flecked housemade flatbreads. (The restaurant also makes pretty good pizza with this bread.)

You can dip the bread into three kinds of eggplant — one Middle-Eastern-style baba ghanouj, one traditional Turkish chargrilled eggplant salad chopped up with lemon, garlic and parsley, and one luscious heap of fried eggplant cubes in tomato sauce. There is also hummus, a spicy tomato-onion-walnut salad and a refreshing yogurt dip with dill and mint. The only bummer comes in the form of beady, dry tabbouleh.

And, then, move on to the mixed grill. I’ve found that Cafe Istanbul consistently does a commendable job with its grill. The chunks of chicken, glossy and juicy, taste both as lean and flavorful as protein can simultaneously be. The adana kabob of ground lamb tickles the tongue with red pepper and garlic, and the small pieces of whole lamb are the prizes on the plate. Even the gyro meat spends a minute on the grill to crisp and juice up.

The salad heaped on the side is as fresh and crunchy as the rice spread on the bottom of the plate is soft and absorbent. Added bonus: a chargrilled tomato and whole Anaheim pepper, soft and hot, ready to give your plate that perfect smoosh factor.

In addition to the pizzas, there are several other entrees, including a generous selection of vegetarian choices. We tried the baked eggplant stuffed with rice, walnuts, lentils and cheese. It tasted unconvincing, like health food made by someone who wouldn’t personally eat it. The eggplant hadn’t cooked long enough to lose its sponginess, and the mixture inside lacked fat and seasoning.

There’s a classic Turkish eggplant dish called “imam bayildi” that, as the story goes, was cooked with so much delicious olive oil that the imam fainted when he tried it. I think if the imam tried Cafe Istanbul’s eggplant he’d be in no such danger. In fact, he could down a plate of this and go right to a pilates class.

Stay with the kebobs, and you may just discover a new favorite restaurant.

Cafe Agora, in its old location, was a goofball charmer. The tiny room was crammed with so many tables in such a haphazard fashion you might wonder if the furniture had just been delivered. A bar hugged one side of the room, and a crammed deli case fronted the kitchen. The outsized personality of owner Al Ozelci filled this room like an opera singer in a studio apartment.

Ozelci loves to shower food on his customers, occasionally hand feeding a few. I never got this treatment, but I always looked forward to the moment when he’d come to the table with bites of baklava or mini cups of rice pudding and hold them out at mouth level, allowing me to make quick work of them.

The new location, just down the street, trades this quirky personality for space. There are a lot of tables and booths, a covered patio that fills up quickly on nice evenings, and a bar with backlit shelving that plays the sexy lounge card a little too hard. Everything feels very new, like furniture in a model home.

While the old Cafe Agora was like a great deli that had busted through to the next level, this one seems more like a restaurant that hasn’t quite figured out its moves yet. Servers don’t quite know their stations, and you can find yourself waiting a bit for more of the fluffy pita bread or a drink refill.

The mixed maza platter, Cafe Agora’s calling card, is still very good but not quite the perfectly calibrated plate of love that it used to be. Ours was mostly hummus, with small tastes of the various eggplant salads, bean salad, yogurt, tabbouleh and the fantastic carrot-dill spread called havuc ezme.

I’d like to think we caught the kitchen on a bad night, as the Agora mixed grill seemed haphazard, some of the meat chunks dry and chewy, others showing more care.

On our way out of the restaurant, Ozelci thanked us for coming and asked if we were served our free tastes of dessert. We said no, but not to worry, we’d get it next time. He insisted. We insisted. He insisted harder, and so we waited until he hustled out with a paper plate holding baklava bites, holding them up to our mouths.

How can you not love this?