Afendi's Turkish Grill (lunch)
209 McDowell St., Petaluma, CA
http://www.afendisturkishgrill.com/
Review date: May 2011

We are spending a few days on the Sonoma side of the Wine Country, and arranged to have lunch with one of our friends. Afendi's is a pleasant, casual restaurant in a shopping mall near his home. We deliberately over-ordered, knowing we could depend upon him to take the leftovers home (thanks, Steve!)

To begin we ordered the mezze platter, a good assortment of their starters served with a generous basket of the soft, puffy flatbread topped with some sesame seeds. It isn't artisanal but is reasonably fresh, although not the penultimate bread that some of the Yelpers would have you believe it is. 

Although the menu lists specific appetizers that are supposedly included in the platter, it didn't seem accurate. I suspect the kitchen puts in a different selection at times, depending upon what's available, which can be a little frustrating when you can't figure out what's what.

The hummus is roughly textured, clearly housemade, and excellent. The eggplant was good if not up to the level of the hummus – cubes of soft roasted eggplant with onions, garlic and olive oil. The white bean salad (piyaz) was tasty; the bulgar-parsley salad (tabbouleh) was refreshing with nicely chewy bulgar. Instead of the potato salad, we received the eggplant yogurt salad (haydar), which wasn't terribly interesting and had a too-runny dressing besides. The winner was the spicy veggie salad (ezme), a wonderfully spicy spread with red bells, tomatoes, walnuts, parsley, lemon, and a great dose of chile heat. 

I tried to order one of the meat pies, but they had run out of both the chicken and the beef-lamb. I settled for ordering the spinach-feta in filo pastry (ispanak), for the three of us to share. There were two decent sized triangles but the bottoms were somewhat burnt. They came with an indifferent salad of slices of dill pickle, hard crumbled feta, sliced tomatoes of mediocre quality and shredded romaine, no dressing. 

The overly tender/overly salty meat used in gyros is not really our favorite way of cooking, and this time Carlos and I goofed. He ordered the Afendi Iskender, beef and lamb gyro slices over bread cubes with double sauces of tart tomato and thinned yoghurt drizzled over the meat slices. Somehow I thought he had ordered the kebabs, so I chose a salad topped with lamb slices, which unfortunately was the same lamb he had. 

On the good side: the meat was very tender although cut thicker than many places do, and the servings were very generous. On the bad: it was the typical salty-no-interesting-herbs meat, and the salad was still the same bland uninteresting mix, with the addition of a mildly pickled vegetable shred that I couldn't identify and didn't add anything much except a small heap of bright fuchsia color to the plate.

Of the two we liked Carlos' entree more. The bread absorbed the sauces and made a filling and tasty entree. Steve chose a gyro wrap, but we were so full from the mezze plate and spinach pie, he had to take most of it home.

We had multiple cups of their Turkish tea in lovely gold-trimmed small glasses and served with a lump of sugar. Steve and Carlos shared an order of pistachio baklava, which has two small squares, while I opted for the rice pudding, which is quite large and dusted with top-quality cinnamon. Both were very good.

I wish we had tried the kebabs, as Yelpers have given those high marks. However, It was a slightly better than average meal, because that mezze platter is a dazzler with that spicy ezme and the chunky hummus. Carlos' entree was big enough we could have shared it between the two of us, so Steve took two entree-sized boxes home afterwards.

One platter, four entrees (the cheese-spinach pie doesn't come as a starter, only as an entree with salad), two desserts, three beverages, with tip came to $93.