For a couple of years I've been avoiding a place, it's not the dentists, it's not the gym - although both are truly terrifying - no, the place I've been mostly avoiding is the Kervan Palace. Why? Well cos from the outside it resembles a truck stop café. It says Turkish restaurant above the door, but it looks like a giant takeaway where the only Turkish thing about the menu might be doner kebab.
That said we were still curious enough to try a Groupon deal just on the off-chance it might be good. We booked for a Saturday lunch, headed into town and entered the den. To be fair the front of it IS a takeaway cafe, on looking around the front "caff" there was clearly a small Turkish clientele there - usually a good sign when the nationals like a place - snacking and watching tv. We were led through to an unexpectedly large room at the back, it was more of a function room than a restaurant in truth, but it had a bar and the furniture was acceptable. Only a small group of guys were in there, putting some trophies out on a table.
I got a wee bottle of Efes Draft - I still love that contradiction in terms - from our enthusiastic waiter and settled down to perusing the menu. My partner chose the Borek (filo parcels filled with spinach and feta cheese) and I chose Chargrilled Mediterranean Sausage to start, and then we had Adana Kebab (spicy lamb mince) & Iskendar Kebab (adana kebab with a tomato sauce) respectively. I like things saucy!
The restaurant was getting strangely busier and everyone seemed to know each other, and we realised as multiple trays of food came out that we were sitting in the middle of an amateur football team's awards ceremony. It gave the space a bit of atmosphere though. We got the starters and commenced with the controlled demolition. My partner knows a bit about Turkish food, being Turkish, and her comment was that her parcels were a bit flat, not puffed enough. My sausages were, well, pretty typical beef Turkish sausages, with a rather plain-old typical British salad. That said it was not bad, plenty of food and good value.
The kebabs appeared and again we were impressed by the portions. The texture of the kebabs was pretty good, they were light, quite spicy but not as smooth as we like. There was a helluva lot of homemade flatbread, particularly under mine where the sauce had made it a little sodden. The sauce was probably tomato and yoghurt, but it was just interesting enough. It was a lot of food for sure, too much bread maybe?
It's not the most accomplished Turkish restaurant in town, but it does have serious competition, and I think if you were here on a normal lunchtime you might find it very quiet, but on a weekend night for a value dinner I think it would hit the mark for most folk! read more