I've never been the type to insist that no two foods on my plate touch each other. Whether it's pancake syrup leaking onto the bacon or cornbread crumbs in my turnip greens, I love for the mingling of ingredients to continue even after the cooking ends. Yet all my life, I ate each piece on a kebab separately. I just didn't know better--until last summer.
At a tiny, unassuming restaurant called Çiya Kebap near the Asian banks of Istanbul, a knowing waiter, kindly sensing our ignorance, took a few moments to show my mother and me how a kebab ought to be eaten. He'd just set before us a tantalizing skewer of ground lamb, charred eggplant and red onion, nearly liquid tomato, and sweet-hot chili--but in less than a minute, he mashed everything together so thoroughly that the components were hardly recognizable. Then he sprinkled a spice blend called baharat over all of it and instructed us (nonverbally, since we couldn't speak the same language) to mop up portions of the mash with the paper-thin flatbread stacked alongside.
Turns out Çiya Kebap, along with two other Çiya restaurants with different menus located just steps away, is world famous. If I'd eaten my kebab in my usual manner, I wouldn't have any clue what the fuss was all about. Instead, I experienced some of the most revelatory mouthfuls in recent memory. The splendor of the combined flavors would be impossible to exaggerate, even with words like "symphony" and "revelation."
Of course, a kebab anywhere, not just in Istanbul, would benefit from such intervention. The key is to glob everything together. Don't be too dainty about it, and don't worry about appearances. Just enjoy the big sloppy mess, and spread the word.
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