Manolya, Ware

I love a bit of Turkish food, but unfortunately don’t get to have it too often. In fact, I can’t remember eating out at a Turkish restaurant for the whole of 2013. Some ‘friends’ of mine (selfishly) visited this restaurant without me a few months ago, so have been really keen to visit since then.

A few weeks ago that was rectified and it didn’t disappoint at all.

Starter was a standard meze fare with some extra taramasolata and humous. The meze consisted of five elements: hellim (traditional grilled Turkish goat’s cheese), sucuk (grilled beef garlic sausage), borek (deep fried filo pastry wrapped over feta cheese and parsley), mittite kofte (char-grilled minced lamb kofte with onions, parsley and sweet red pepper) and kalamar (squid rings fried and served with tartare sauce). This was all very good but at the time it felt like it was too small a portion, as only one plate arrived (enough for two) between the four of us who were dining. In hindsight this was serendipitous, as the main course was immense.

A massive plate of meat! Chicken, pork and lamb with rice and a lovely fresh salad. Even the doner meat was good, which is always a surprise. A very big dish but I couldn’t leave a single bite of this behind, it was just too good. I finished with baklava, which is a favourite of mine.

So, live in Ware? Where? Ware. Go!

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