Layer after layer of shatter-crisp phyllo melted into the next like a runner in a relay race passing on a brushstroke of ghee instead of a baton. The spinach börek at Sultan Döner Gyro earned big wows from everyone at the table for the pastry's sleight-of-hand, as well as for the vegetal and tangy filling (spinach, feta, cottage cheese, eggs) beneath those marvelous layers.
“The butter is the key. Nice butter, good butter, make all the difference. Butter is the key,” said Sinan Camozu, co-owner of the Downtown Turkish restaurant, which just celebrated its one-year anniversary.
"It's really 'three B’s,'" a friend quipped back during a postmeal conversation with Camozu in the newly built outdoor seating area a couple of weeks ago. "It's butter, brightness and balance."
"Well, tomato paste is important, too," Camozu replied. He is a gracious front-of-house personality, in addition to being a terrific cook. "We love to add sour flavors in our food."
Turkey's cuisine reflects its geographic crossroads and its place in global history. The country straddles Europe and Asia, and was the center of power in the former Ottoman and Byzantine Empires, which means a broad swath of ingredients and techniques have informed the development of the country's cuisine for millennia.
Still, according to Camozu, most people in the United States haven't even scratched the surface of what the large country offers to the global dining table.
"People have a pre-conceived notion of what Turkish food is. And a lot of the time, it's not even really Turkish food. It's just a generalized ‘Middle Eastern food.’ So all I can do is present the dishes that we make in the best way that I can and I hope that people will want to understand it and enjoy it," he said.
The specialty of the house is döner (thinly cut meat stacked and cooked vertically on a rotating spit), but there is a lot to like about just about everything offered at the counter-service eatery. Over the last year, Camozu, his wife, Fatma, and another Turkish chef, Kadir Kac, have developed a medium-sized menu built around street food and homestyle dishes that, in my experience, is the tastiest restaurant-based representation of Turkish food in the region.
"Pittsburgh deserves a good döner. When you get the commercial gyro and döner tubes, which is what almost everyone does, there's very little meat in there. It's mostly soy used as a filling," Camozu said.
Every morning, Camozu and Kac stack layers of marinated lamb and beef (interspersed with extra lamb fat to add richness) onto the restaurant's spits. The ribbons of meat are crispy, juicy and the right kind of salty, and they melt as you eat them.
If iskender is on the menu when you visit, it’s worth ordering. The dish has chunks of homemade bread soaked in a rich, peppery tomato sauce topped with slices of döner, plus a big spoonful of tangy yogurt to refresh your palate as you dig into the hearty meal.
Or go for a döner plate with bulgur rice, which also includes a tangy tzatziki and a peppy slaw. That whole-grain bulgur is fantastic. It’s toothsome and flavorful, and is one of those "eating healthy without thinking about it" situations we ought to incorporate more frequently into our diets.
"I used to give [bulgur] away for people to taste because they don't know about it. And I still do, but now I sell a lot more of it," Camozu said. "But my white rice is very good, too."
It is. His Turkish short-grain rice almost has the texture of pasta. With distinct little grains, it's a bit chewy, and there's definitely a good amount of Camozu's beloved clarified butter in there.
Sultan's döner — there's a tasty chicken option, too — is terrific served in a wrap, but I'd wait to order that again because a long-delayed bread oven likely will be delivered in late October, and that's going to level-up the experience. At the moment, the bread (aside from what's used in the iskander) is just about the only thing they're not preparing from scratch.
"We are doing everything the long way, the hard way, because it's the right way," Camozu said.
There aren't many better examples of this than the restaurant's dolma (stuffed grape leaves), which are borderline mind-blowing. The first bite is like a soft tug with some substance that melts like tissue paper as you hit the delicate, lightly spiced ground beef, herb and cracked rice filling. And there’s none of that bitter brine flavor you’ll get from commercially jarred grape leaves, because these are made from raw grape leaves imported from California and marinated in-house. "Then we sit down like it's a family dinner, rolling everything," Camozu said.
Those dolmas are one of Fatma Camozu's family specialties, as is Turkish wedding soup, which is another must-get when it’s offered. She’s from Gaziantep, a city in southeastern Turkey long celebrated for its gastronomy, and it shows in her recipes.
"Without her I'm nothing. She knows how to make everything just a little bit better," Camozu said.
You'll get a creamy ivory broth showered with oregano and punctuated with dabs of lemon oil. There are tiny handmade lamb meatballs that might resemble the frozen factory concoctions but, in reality, are miniature flavor bombs.
"It's a very special soup. When you have families come over to the dinner table, or, of course for weddings, this is the soup that we make. It's an offering of hospitality," said Camozu.
He's from Sivas in central Turkey, and studied hotel management and business in Gallipoli. After completing his degree, he lived in Istanbul, where he worked in hotel kitchens as well as in front-of-house positions. When he was younger, he spent a year in the United States on a work and travel program.
"I said one year is not enough, I need to go back. But then all these years passed by," he said.
Camozu returned permanently to the United States in 2009, which is when he moved to Pittsburgh. Before returning to restaurant kitchens, he worked various jobs, including driving taxis and for rideshare services. He even took a restaurant job in Houston for six months but decided that Pittsburgh was home for him and his family.
"It was tough at times, but now I'm doing better than my goals. I own my own restaurant," he said.
Now, Camozu has his sights set on a new goal: purchasing a pastry rolling machine so that he can make his own phyllo from scratch.
"For the last five years, I have been studying to make a baklava bakery,” he said. "Everything in life is just a step. Climb one and then the next one. That's what you can do."
Sultan Döner Gyro: 133 6th St., Downtown
Hal B. Klein: hklein@post-gazette.com, Twitter @halbklein and IG @halbklein.
First Published: September 22, 2022, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: September 22, 2022, 11:26 a.m.
