Curry In Ankara – Finally!

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Wednesday 19 February, 2014 by Uncle Spike

Having travelled around India a fair bit, and having lived and worked in the north of England for 10 years, West Yorkshire to be exact, I am a self-confessed curry addict. Not that I wasn’t when I was a softie from the south coast, but I got to taste the ‘real’ food during many outings in Leeds, Sheffield, Halifax and of course Bradford, voted Curry Capital of England for the past 3 years.

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Here in south-west Turkey we just don’t have such cuisines, but to be honest, nor do we have the opportunity to eat out anyway, what with the farm, costs and our locale. But when visiting the ‘big smoke’ (Ankara), we do try to grab at least one or two meals out.

However, Asian cuisine? There are a couple of decent Chinese restaurants, but the Indian subcontinent was never really well represented there, until now…

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We stumbled across a little backstreet eatery in Gaziosmanpaşa, a suburb of Anakara renowned for many of the embassies and consulates. Run mainly as a catering business for the embassies, they keep the restaurant more for ‘the fun of cooking’ I think – and to try out new recipes on a more captive audience.

After some initial concerns over the blandness of the cuisine (to my tastes anyway), which had been very much dumbed-down for the local palette I guess, chef soon whipped us up some more authentic dishes of the Phal, Madras and Vindaloo variety and upon request even created some mango lassi (although not actually on the menu).

Finally, my taste-buds have been rekindled….

After a few visits to the kitchen and chats with Amarouche, the Algerian chef, we bid farewell as we prepared to leave on our 10 hours drive back home. All was not lost. We had found a restaurant to make our annual visits to Ankara that bit more exciting, and much to the amusement of my family, I left the restaurant clutching a large tin of hot Algerian pepper paste, ‘Harissa’.

Well, as my mother used to tell em, “Don’t ask, don’t get!” 

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