Efendy + Meze Bar, Balmain

Miss Piggy dined as a guest of Meze Bar at the invitation of Wasamedia.

I absolute LOVE LOVE LOVE Turkish food (ok, I love all middle eastern and Mediterranean food if we're being honest). The flavours are so fresh and + bold and the food looks so vibrant and colourful. But best of all (for me anyway) is that a big part of middle eastern dining is based around shared plates...and you know what that means? No food envy as you get to try EVERYTHING! No looking longingly at your dining companions plate wishing you were having what they're having.



Efendy in Balmain has long been on my list of restaurants to visit but as is always the way I just hadn't made it there...yet. I was finally enticed there by an invitation to try Efendy's newly opened Meze Bar - a portion of the restaurant that been give over to a more causal, street food style of cuisine than what is served upstairs in Efendy proper.



We start our feast when a tray of colourful tektek shots ($5 by the tea glass or $25 for a 500ml carafe {go the carafe - you won't regret it}) descends on our table. The mastika is a zesty shot of Hendricks gin, mastic liquor, lemon and cucumber - really tart and quite refreshing. The narsist is made with Bacardi, pomegranate molasses, fresh mint and pomegranate juice - sweeter than the mastika but also really refreshing.



Our meze fest begins with some wonderful dips that are accompanied by fluffy, fresh-out-of-the oven mini pide breads ($2.50) that are baked on-site. The pomegranate and capsicum humus ($12.00) is an unusual twist on your usual humus and comes topped with coins of smoky spicy sujuk and little slivers of cucumber and radish. The smoked babaganus with isot pistachio ($12.00) is made with tahini giving it a more nutty, less smokey taste than I've had before. I really enjoy the little pomegranate seeds that give a juicy "pop" as I bite into them.



Lamb's testicles (!) are a feature dish on the Meze Bar menu so I'm pretty relieved when I find out we only have the lamb’s liver ($14.00) with red onion and sumac salad to contend with on this night. To be honest, to date liver and I have NOT been friends thanks to my mother who used to force me to eat chicken liver as a child (to add to this we'd ride on her scooter from Brisvegas to the Gold Coast to collect the dreaded livers - oh, the torture never ended). I'm so relieved to report that the lambs liver was EXCELLENT. It was sliced very thinly with only a mild lamb taste and had a texture very similar to a minute steak.

Lamb's liver aside, by far my favourite dish of the night was the dried eggplant shells dolma, stuffed with lamb, bulgar and sumac molasses ($16.00). Is there anything eggplant cannot do? I really enjoyed the nutty flavour of the bulgar mixed in with the aromatic lamb.



The prawn, mussel, artichoke and okra stew with shanklish cheese ($18.00) was another really flavoursome dish -- I think my third favourite dish of the night (after the eggplant dolma and the lamb's liver). I really enjoyed the sweetness to this dish, and the slight flavour of aniseed which I'm guessing is thanks to some fennel seeds. I'm also loving shanklish cheese which remained in firm pieces throughout the stew. In was also nice to see an obviously seasonal dish on the menu - loquat kebaps ($18.00). I don't think I've ever eaten loquats before. They look quite similar to an apricot and I found the fruit nice and sweet with a slightly tart after flavour.



Next up is a wonderfully vibrant and colourful salad that to me embodies everything about middle eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. Bold colours and flavours abounded in this wild rocket, tomato, walnut, pomegranate, feta "spoon salad" ($10.00). The dressing was lovely, slightly sour and a nice counterbalance to the sweet pomegranate and creaminess of the feta. More please! The salad also negated any naughtiness of these delicious fried pastirma and + kashar cheese pachanga borek ($8.00). Look at that cheese ooze! Is your mouth watering? Mine sure is!



Believe it or not I first had "iskender kebab" when I lived in Broken Hill -- a town not renowned for it's abundance of multicultural food. A Turkish lady ran the kitchen in one of the local pubs and I was thrilled to be able eat something other than schnitzel or Chinese takeaway in my three years dining in outback NSW. The beef kebap ($20.00) on offer at Meze Bar comes drizzled in a tomato- based "iskender sauce" which is then doused with mild flavoured garlic yogurt. The whole lot sits atop soft pide bread that soaks up all the juices and flavours from the meat. It really is delicious.

I'm glad that we got to try the veal kofte ($16.00) that comes with a white bean piyaz (aka salad) as kofte, along with colourful dips, is something I always associate with Turkish food. The kofte is charred to perfection giving it a slightly crunchy outer shell whilst the meat inside remains tender and moist.



If you've ever been to Auburn you may have seen restaurants serving "adana" or chopped meat that is shaped around a sword and cooked over charcoal. The lamb adana ($18.00) at Meze Bar arrives at our table swordless (probably better for OH+S that way). It is wrapped in a snug layer of pita bread that is topped with a zesty tomato salad.



For some reason my fellow bloggers were all full by this stage but my dessert stomach was raring to go! The dessert meze plate ($12.00) is a sight to behold, laden with pistachio and almond keskul (like a pudding) candied pumpkin and traditional baklava. I love that the warm keskul was topped with threads of melt-on-tongue Persian fairy floss and the candied pumpkin was great. The texture was crisp, but not earth shatteringly so and the sweetness of the "candy" was offset by a good drizzle of savoury sesame sauce.



I've been told that Meze Bar do a really great weekend breakfast so I cannot wait to head back here to try it for myself and of course I hope to be back soon for more wonderful meze.

Efendy and Meze Bar can be found at 79 Elliott Street, Balmain. Phone them on 9810 5466.