Mater Turkish in New Town

Ana took me to New Town to meet up with some of her friends at the University. New Town, she says, is famous for multicultural cuisine and vintage shopping. It was a university area, there were a lot of students walking around the streets and just getting out of school.

For lunch we headed to one of her favorite turkish places — Mater

Cacik – yogurt with cucumber and dill is a cold dip that is very refreshing. Their turkish bread that came along with it seemed homemade. It was soft inside and crunchy outside with a slight hint of herbs.

We also ordered the grill plate with a lamb skewer, sausage and grilled chicken. The lamb skewer was a little tough which is quite surprising. The sausage was a bound force meat that had the strong flavor of smoke and a little lime and pepper. The chicken was divine. It was soft and buttery with a slightly toasted exterior. It went perfect with the red cabbage pickles, the salsa (which looked like a tabbouleh without the bulgur), and onion with sumac. Eating it along with the hummus was just a variety of textures like velvety, crunchy, soft, chewy as well as flavors like sour, sweet, spicy and herby. The rice had little rissoni specks on it which is traditionally done in Turkish cuisine. I also find the rice quite rich as it is soft with a very light coating of butter.

Hummus was very smooth and creamy. It is possibly the creamiest hummus I ever had. No grits, just a very light and smooth paste that has a velvety texture in the mouth. I watched Zohan and wondered how hummus can be used for everything but if the hummus was this smooth, I can imagine how this complements a lot of food items.