Best Thing We Ate This Week: Dips and Turkish pizza at Marmara Mediterranean Cuisine
Editor's Note: "Best Thing We Ate This Week" is a weekly feature highlighting food writers Sarah Griesemer and Gabriela L. Laracca's favorite dishes. Follow along at app.com and Jersey Shore Eats on Instagram.
It's not often that I get to eat Turkish food, but after a visit to Marmara Mediterranean Cuisine, I think that needs to change.
The restaurant's mixed appetizer platter, along with their lahmacun, or Turkish pizza, is the best thing I ate this week.
The 230-seat restaurant opened last month at Freehold Raceway Mall in Freehold Township, in a first-floor space previously home to a Ruby Tuesday. The transformation is incredible — Marmara would fit in among any city's fine restaurants — and from decor to service to food, it is a beautiful addition to the mall.
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Plenty of curious diners stopped in to check out the menu on a recent weekday, when I was lucky to sample several of Executive Chef Metin Calisir's dishes.
Calisir, who leads a team of chefs from Istanbul, prepared chitir kebab, made of kebab wrapped in lavash bread and topped with grilled eggplant and garlic yogurt. He also fixed one of his favorites, steak sushi, made from thinly sliced beef rolled around mushrooms and peppers in a cream and cheese sauce.
His Gavurdaği salad, named for Turkey's Gavur mountains, is a tower of tomatoes, peppers, onions and walnuts with pomegranate and olive oil.
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All were delicious, but I especially loved his cold appetizer platter. Wedges of crisped pita are served with dips that are staples in Middle Eastern cuisine: hummus, creamy with a bit of spice and adorned with a few crispy chickpeas; labneh, made of yogurt, garlic, walnuts, mint and olive oil; babaganoush, made with grilled and smoked eggplant; eggplant salad; Pink Sultan, a dip of diced boiled beets and labneh; carrot tarator, with sauteed carrots, dill and labneh; and muammara, a Middle Eastern dip of bread crumbs, walnuts, cheese and spices.
In the kitchen, co-owner Firat Harbiyeci also introduced me to his favorite dish, lahmacun, made from paper-thin dough coated in a thin layer of ground beef, ground lamb, onion, tomato and spices and cooked for several minutes in a fiery oven. When it was done, we rolled it up and took a bite.
Crispy and savory (with a little heat), it is a must-try.
Go: Marmara Mediterranean Cuisine is at 3710 Route 9 in Freehold Township; 732-808-2727, marmaracuisine.com.
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"Best Thing I Ate" runs every Wednesday online and on The Asbury Park Press food Instagram, Jersey Shore Eats. Have a suggestion on where we should try next? Email sgriesemer@gannettnj.com.
Sarah Griesemer joined the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey in 2003 and has been writing all things food since 2014. Send restaurant tips to sgriesemer@gannettnj.com and subscribe to our Jersey Shore Eats newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Jersey Shore restaurants: Best Thing We Ate is from Marmara
