Çiya Sofrası

Dishes mentioned

• Polpette di Carne Trita Fritte

  I started with the fried minced meatballs. You can really taste the spices, especially coriander, which I normally don't prefer, but here it works perfectly. It's very, very good.

• Pollo alla Melagrana

  I tried the chicken with pomegranate. It's exceptional. There are a million flavors: besides pomegranate, there are also sun-dried tomatoes. The chicken meat is very tender, a bit shredded, good. A quintal of oil, a bit of spices. It's atomic. With a bit of pita, I could eat it every day.

• Agnello al Mastice (Salep)

  This is lamb with mastic, also called salep. It's a very particular spice, derived from orchids, with a floral, slightly bitter, earthy flavor. Paired with the lamb, it's exceptional. There are also little onions with a sweetish, slightly sour taste. It's delicious.

Dishes mentioned

• Manti

  The dough is rolled really thin and cut into tiny squares, then filled with a little swipe of ground meat mixture. They're boiled until they rise to the surface, then topped with garlic yogurt, a sauce with spices and butter, dried mint, sumac, and chili flakes. It's that comfort food — the spongy, fresh doughiness of the pasta, that little bit of minced meat which gives a burst of flavor, and the freshness of the yogurt with the garlicky infusion. You definitely get four or five of them in your spoon in one bite, and they just kind of melt in your mouth with so many different textures.

• Lahmacun

  The dough is very thin, then topped with a handful of minced meat mixture — mostly minced beef with some lamb tail fat for aroma, with parsley and seasonings. He mashes it down evenly onto the bread, then it goes directly into the oven for about one minute because it's so thin. Fresh out of the oven, you add parsley, lemon juice, and sumac, then wrap it up. The dough is thin but has that perfect texture — bubbly and crispy on the outside with that perfect char and a little smokiness, and gooey where the meat touches the bread. The flavor of the beef and lamb mixture, the parsley, the acidity of the lemon juice and the sumac, and I taste the roasted chili too.

• Kuru Fasulye

  This is kuru fasulye — white beans with rice, another classic Turkish comfort food. The rice is so aromatic, and the white beans go on top. It's really hearty and comforting, the combination of rice and beans is eaten in so many different cultures. This is considered one of the national dishes of Turkey. It's so warm and hearty, the rice is really fragrant. If you're really hungry, this is what you'd want to eat because you can just tell how filling it is. The shredded beef on top has a nice saltiness to it and is just meaty.