“Does the sheep’s head soup have a lot of stuff in it?” I asked my server.
Realizing that this was somewhat ambiguous, especially applied to a dish as laden with stuff as the brew of lambs’ snouts, ears, tongues, cheeks and eyeballs known in Turkey as kelle paca, I tried again.
“Is it very filling, I mean?”
My concern was a familiar one, to me at least. I was in Queens, at a new Turkish restaurant in Astoria called Lokanta, and the menu was so appealing that I wanted to try it all. Already I was set on a few bourekas, some labneh, the fava dip and some form of braised lamb over eggplant. I’d spotted another three or four dishes that I was probably going to tack on at the end of my order, as if by afterthought. I suspected that I could add a small bowl of kelle paca and still eat everything else. But a big bowl, one so thick with bits formerly affixed to a sheep’s skull that a spoon would stand up in it, might tip the scale.
The server pondered this for a while until a wiry man got up from his marble-topped table in the corner and conferred with her. Wearing baggy jeans, a white T-shirt and a baseball cap that kept his zinc-colored ponytail in place, he looked like a contractor, maybe a painter who’d come by to touch up the moldings and had been invited to stay for a Turkish coffee. Then he spoke to us about the sheep’s head soup.
“I am a genius,” he began. “And even I don’t know how to answer this question. I think that the question must be wrong.”
CreditDaniel Krieger for The New York Times
As those who chase the scent of lamb and charred eggplant around the city have probably guessed, this was no contractor. This was Orhan Yegen, the Turkish-born chef and restaurateur who has opened close to 20 Turkish restaurants over the past two decades or so while keeping up a running monologue that made him a favorite of food writers. In 2004, Mr. Yegen opened Sip Sak in Turtle Bay, then proceeded to surprise those who had charted his career by embarking on a long, stable period.
All was quiet, relatively speaking, until April, when Lokanta arrived in Astoria to supplement the Greek and Cypriot menus along its stretch of Broadway, and Mr. Yegen arrived to tell customers that their questions were wrong.
The kelle paca colloquy ended when I agreed to order it. After hours on the stove, the meat on the head had fallen away into about eight different textures, from frilly to ropy to collagenously chewy to tender and lean. All of this suspended in a slippery, almost sticky broth the color of cappuccino. And no, it was not too filling.
Soups, braises, stews and other recipes requiring plenty of time and even more olive oil are the basis of Mr. Yegen’s reputation. They set his menus apart from those at other Turkish restaurants around town, which tend to revolve around the grill. Lokanta makes very fine kofte, but for a full medley of minced and skewered meats, you are better off under the swaying chandeliers of Taci’s Beyti on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn. Lokanta will grill or roast a whole fish, but it will not be all that different from what might be served in Brooklyn at Liman, where your bass will be filleted within view of the fishing boats and swans of Sheepshead Bay.
Diners in Lokanta’s custody have signed on for a more nuanced view of the Turkish kitchen. Take, for instance, the shadings that lamb takes on. In hunkar begendi, chunks of it are stewed in tomatoes and peppers and ladled over an eggplant mash beaten to a memorable richness with cheese and milk. Ali nazik is, in schematic form, the same thing, built on the same foundation of milky eggplant, but in Lokanta’s version the lamb is ground and simmered with onions and red and green peppers; somehow it achieves a rich, unctuous consistency that is amplified by the eggplant and the scoop of strained yogurt dropped on top.
Lokanta’s “roasted lamb and rice” is in the pilaf family, which means that the rice is not just a side dish but the heart of the recipe, baked until alluringly sweet with currants, allspice and cinnamon, then sprinkled with fresh dill at the last minute. The lamb’s job is to be obligingly tender, and it succeeds, one reason the dish is requested by so many tables.
To fend off boredom, I imagine, Mr. Yegen fills his manti with both lamb and beef. Each little dumpling is rolled by fingertip and is roughly the size of one. The meat has been seasoned just forcefully enough that it will announce itself, politely but clearly, as it breaks through the dough. It would be possible to sit down in front of a bowl of these, spooning them up with their warm yogurt and chile oil and dried mint, and call for another bowl a minute later.
Of course, the meal should begin with strips of nigella-dotted Turkish bread and a spread or two — maybe memorably creamy purée of dried favas; or the roughly mashed eggplant, smoky without a trace of bitterness; and one of the strained-yogurt dips, either the tangy cacik, laced with minced cucumbers, or the labneh, as firm as a new mattress. Either will prove useful as the meal goes on. So will a simple salad, especially the one with white beans and purple onions.
The tightly rolled, golden bourekas are like skinny Turkish spring rolls filled with dill and melting feta. Cold poached leeks, a frequent special, are more appealing than the cold poached artichokes that have a permanent spot on the menu. If Mr. Yegen tells you that the grilled octopus is the best in the city, keep in mind that he rarely seems to leave his own restaurant. It’s quite good, though, with a fugitive sweetness that may be supplied by the tomatoes and purple onions.
Desserts run toward milky white puddings, nice if you are looking for a mild sedative. The baklava, imported from Turkey, is a treat for those of us who like pistachios and think sugar syrup makes a better baklava sweetener than honey. The unlikely champion, though, is the butternut squash that has been languorously baked in its own juices with nothing but sugar. The technique is one of those small tricks that helps Mr. Yegen’s cooking stand out, like the perfume of lemon peel in the Turkish lemonade.
