Restaurant review: Talulla's raises the bar with scratch-made Turkish cuisine

To an infrequent visitor, the changes at Talulla's might have gone unnoticed when the Chapel Hill restaurant changed hands in 2007. The menu remained Turkish, after all, and the place continued to look like a Turkish restaurant. Moorish parchment chandeliers still hung from the high ceilings, giving a warm glow to everything from the colorful Turkish rugs covering the walls to the honeyed tones of well-worn hardwood floors.

Regular customers would have had no trouble spotting the changes. The Turkish rugs bear different patterns now, for one thing. The restaurant's new owners, the husband-and-wife team of Aligul and Janan Sevil, also added a few folk art pieces from their native Turkey, and gave the tables in the window alcoves a cozier feel with curtains of gauze and deep garnet brocade.

Regulars would surely notice a difference in the food, too - not so much the menu (which offers much the same survey of traditional Turkish fare as its predecessor) as the level of execution. Aligul Sevil has raised the bar.

Devoted fans of the old Talulla's would no doubt insist that some of their favorites have changed little. The mezze platter, for one, remains a thoroughly satisfying sampler of a half dozen or more salads and spreads served with house-baked pide, Turkey's thick, sesame-spangled take on pita. Pideler, football-shaped "Turkish pizzas" with toppings ranging from fresh seasonal vegetables to minced lamb with tomatoes, onions and peppers, are excellent, too. But the old-timers would point out that they're no better than they were at the old Talulla's. And they'd be right.

But the more you sample across the menu - and seven years is plenty of time for sampling - the more delights you discover. Mücver, for starters, crunchy disk-shaped fritters of zucchini, feta and egg punctuated with fresh herbs. Sigara böregi, deep-fried phyllo "cigars" filled with Turkish feta and parsley, served with a smoky pepper dipping sauce. Arnavut cigeri, petal-thin slices of veal liver, well-seasoned and pan-fried, that have made a convert of every liver-averse dining companion I've ever shared them with.

Anyone seeking an alternative to the meat kebab variations that make up the bulk of the entree offering should find ample satisfaction in levrek: whole bronzini (European sea bass), butterflied and expertly grilled. Patlican oturtmasi and sebzeli musakka, Turkey's answers to eggplant parmesan and moussaka, respectively, are winning vegetarian alternatives.

If, on the other hand, you've come for kebabs, you've come to the right place. Especially if you come on a Friday or Saturday night, when döner kebab - rotisserie-roasted, shaved lamb - is offered. Iskender, a variation that serves up döner on a bed of Turkish bread, slathered with a rich tomato-yogurt sauce, is also available. But for my money, the mixed grill - lamb chop, köfte (herbed minced lamb grilled on a skewer), Adana kebab (think spicy köfte), chicken (gratifyingly moist thumb-size nuggets), plus that Friday and Saturday night bonus of döner - is the way to go.

Desserts live up to the high standards set by the savory fare. If you order künefe, which the menu describes (accurately if un-poetically) as "shredded wheat wrapped around Hatay cheese, topped with a mulberry extract, oven baked, and dressed with our house-made syrup," your server will advise you that it's baked to order. It's worth the wait (and shareable to boot), but if you're pressed for time by all means treat yourself to the panna-cotta-meets-toasted-marshmallow delights of kazan dibi.

It pays to listen when your server is reciting nightly specials, too. Fresh fish specials - anything from dorade (sea bream) to fresh anchovies - are invariably rewarding.

If the epicurean gods are smiling, you might even find yourself at Talulla's on a night when istim kebab (fork-tender lamb shank served on a bed of creamy smoked eggplant puree) is in the offing. If, like me, you're so pleased with the dish that you ask your server (who may well turn out to be Janan Sevil) to convey your compliments to the chef, she might share a detail that goes a long way toward explaining Talulla's success: Once a week, usually on a Thursday, Aligul takes delivery of a whole lamb, which he then butchers and transforms into a variety of dishes, from lamb shank to döner kebab.

Now that's what I call scratch cooking.

This story was originally published January 8, 2015 at 8:00 PM with the headline "Restaurant review: Talulla's raises the bar with scratch-made Turkish cuisine."