Lisa's Turkish Kitchen, a local family-owned business, quickly opened in the space where Ivangie Tea used to live in Ridgewood, NJ.
Some random thoughts:
I don't know much about Turkish food.
The room is spacious and colorful.
We ordered the Karisik Meze (Mixed appetizers, 11.95), which included hummus, lebni, eggplant salad, babaganush, stuffed grape leaves and ezme salad.
The ezme salad was excellent. I've never had this dish, so I have no baseline for comparison. But it was really super. As was the hummus. The smoky eggplant salad was great. In fact, the whole plate was very good. We're definitely ordering that ezme salad again.
We also ordered the mixed grill (23.95), in order to try as much as possible. This included Adana (ground lamb), doner (ground lamb), lamb sish, chicken sish, and kofte kebab.
The chicken was only as good as one might expect. The lamb dishes were all great, although I thought the kebab was a bit overcooked. In fact, we liked the ground lamb components the most.
The menu is incredibly hard to read. The cursive font is painful on the eyes. easy to read, now that they've reworked the fonts.
There are a bunch of fish dishes, including a whole fish.
Our dinner happened to be on their second night. Even so, the service seemed quite eager and showed promise. I'll not mention slip-ups as they should be afforded the chance to tighten it all up a bit.
Seems like a winner.
Lisa's Turkish Kitchen : 54 Chestnut Street : Ridgewood, NJ : 201.251.8686 : BYOB
