Fides Bar and Grill

Turkish$

It’s not hard to understand why every table in this thronging 70-seat restaurant has ordered the mixed grill. The glistening pile includes a juicy lamb cutlet, spiced chicken thigh skewers, a sweet little wing, and cumin-spiced sucuk sausage from Turkish smallgoods maker Anadolu, just up the road in Campbellfield. Everything is touched by charcoal, with the stripes to prove it, and there’s a mound of buttery rice that we need to talk about later. You couldn’t exactly say anyone feasting on the grill platter is missing out – not today, and not tomorrow either, because there’ll probably be leftovers – but I’m in a different chamber of heaven.

The sleeper dish on the menu at Fides is the pastirmali hummus, a luscious bowl of joy. Smooth, lemony chickpea dip is the base for shavings of fenugreek-fragrant cured beef from the same smallgoods supplier. There are gorgeous little pine nuts. There’s parsley – of course there’s parsley! (Maybe you know the Turkish saying, ‘Her şeye maydanoz olma’ or “Don’t be parsley in everything”, which more or less means, ‘Stop meddling!’) And there’s butter, plenty of it, melted to a toasty lustre. Swipe house-baked flatbread through these layered elements and you’ll understand that there are other ways here than the mixed grill.

About that rice, which comes with many dishes, including the adana kebab, which is properly made with a mix of lamb meat and tail fat to give it the signature richness. A handful of risoni is fried to a deep brown, rice is tossed in butter, and the grains are cooked gently in water and salt. Something this simple has no right to be so good, but it proves an old rule: when you don’t know how something can be so delicious, it’s most likely down to butter and salt.

Fides is a 13-year-old business but it moved from a smaller shop two doors up last year. At that point, sisters Dilan Kiratli and Seher Icme took over the day-to-day running from their parents, Fatma and Izzet. With the next gen in charge, the cocktail menu has expanded, there is an adjoining events space, a dog-friendly heated courtyard (accessible via the rear) and plenty of sheltered pavement seating. The previous all-day offering has been refined to dinner only.

Chef Bahyettin Düz has been recruited from Istanbul to ensure the food is sharp. He’s part of a team that includes older Turkish women who prep (all that parsley!), make soup and hand-roll pastry for the excellent gozleme.

This is a family business to the bones. Even the name of the restaurant is taken from the five Kiratlis first names: Fatma, Izzet, Dilan, middle sister Ece, and Seher. “Food is everything for us,” Dilan told me.

The rice proves an old rule: when you don’t know how something can be so delicious, it’s most likely down to butter and salt.

Other key dishes include the prawns seared with garlic and three types of chilli: dried, fresh and flaked.

Imam bayildi is a vegetarian classic, translating as “the imam fainted”, and no wonder when the eggplant is baked to such sweet softness with onion, tomato, peppers and (unusually but successfully) mushrooms. If you lean meaty, the karniyarik is similar, but with lamb mince – and provokes the same priestly swoon.

You get a sense of the rigor and attention to detail here when you learn about their Basque cheesecake. The baked sensation is made with Philadelphia cream cheese, which is available in large caterers’ tubs. But the family just didn’t think it came out with the same quivery finish as when made with the 250-gram Philly packs from the supermarket. So off to the local shops they go: it’s more expensive, more fiddly, but better. They serve the cake as it’s commonly found in Istanbul, drizzled with melted chocolate and scattered with crushed pistachios.

I also love their semolina cake: the soft dough is stuffed with walnut and cinnamon, baked, soaked in sugar syrup and rolled in coconut. It’s somewhere between dumpling and doughnut, not exactly traditionally Turkish, but spilling with the generosity and character that’s a Fides signature.

Three more Turkish places to try

• Kismet Mezze Bar
  Ten-year-old hatted Turkish restaurant Tulum has opened a cosy, candlelit mini-restaurant out the back, serving more traditional tavern dishes but still with chef Coskun Uysal’s fine touch. The $69 set menu is shareable and bountiful, including hummus with bastourma butter, vegetable pickles and double-fried potatoes with chilli aioli.- 217 Carlisle Street, Balaclava, kismetmezebar.com.au
• One Stop Kebab and Cafe
  This northern suburbs surprise is open from morning till night (except Tuesdays), kicking off with Turkish breakfast and a samovar of tea, powering through with soups, shish wraps and gozleme, and bringing it home with kebab meals and kunefe. Great for groups.- 384-390 Barry Road, Coolaroo, one-stop-kebab-and-cafe.store
• Lahmacun
  The ready-made food offering at Melbourne’s oldest market is starting to rival the other major markets. One of the good newish players is Lahmacun, which makes traditional Turkish lamb-and-spice scattered flatbreads. They also do a “wrapmacun”, filling the flatbread with kofte, salad and pickles. If you’re here to shop, there are frozen lahmacun for an easy meal during the week.- Prahran Market, 163 Commercial Road, South Yarra, instagram.com/lahmacunmelb

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.

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