A doner kebab with a difference, the smoky kiss of charcoal, great breads plus an all-time baklava: just four reasons to set course for Antep Mangal’s new outpost.
Turkish$
“Daaaaad,” bleats one of the teenage boys on the table next to us. “Do they do meat boxes here?”
“Of course they do meat boxes,” says Mr I-Can’t-Wait-Till-The-School-Holidays-Are-Over, somewhat shortly. As it turns out, his reply is somewhat incorrect, too.
Yes, the menu at Antep Mangal Victoria Park – a shiny 40-seat Turkish takeaway that opened on New Year’s Day – features doner kebab meat, a key component of the meat box, also known as the halal snack pack or HSP. Yes, the menu also includes chips: thick, crunchy blocks of potato that are the colour of a Simpsons character.
But no, the menu doesn’t include an option to order both items together, or at least not in a box, drowned in sauces.
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A theory: maybe dad is a regular at the original Antep Mangal that Welat Yilmaz and Hasan Siringul opened six years ago on Beaufort Street to address the shish kebab, gozleme, pide and meat box deficiencies that the area was facing?
So when news broke that Antep Mangal was expanding south, it’s a given that venue number two would offer the same menu, right? Wrong.
Instead, Yilmaz and Siringul want you to consider getting your doner hit via more traditional formats. As an Iskender, perhaps: a saucy arrangement of meat, tomato sauce and melted butter, piled on flatbread and presented alongside a cooling snowdrift of tangy yoghurt. Turkey has strong historical ties to Central Asia, hence the prevalence of dairy in its cuisine. (See the house-made ayran, a mildly salted drinking yoghurt.)
Or maybe you could try the doner plate that invites buttery rice, unusually verdant salad plus fluffy bulgur (cracked wheat) simmered in the Turkish capsicum paste biber salcasi to the party. It’s an option that doesn’t just help you tick off your five serves of veg for the day: it also showcases the chew and eating quality of the meat itself.
Look carefully at the hunk of flesh slowly gyrating on the vertical spit in the open kitchen, and you’ll spy countless strata lines throughout. This is no garden-variety doner, but a yaprak or “leaf” doner: its name a reference to the layers – or leaves – of lamb and beef that veteran chef Celal Per uses to build each towering mille-feuille of meat. Per is also on cutting duties and shaves slices off the doner in both long strips and short patches to create different mouthfeels and textures. The kicker? The yaprak is exclusive to Antep Mangal’s new Vic Park spin-off.
Like the Mount Lawley mothership, all the skewers (shish) are grilled to order over compressed charcoal. Crucially, the mangal – the Turkish word for “grill” – smoulders all day, meaning char-grilled meat is available from just before lunch to early supper and any time in between. (Many grill places, perhaps understandably, only light their charcoal at night and during peak periods.)
True, you’ll wait longer for your shish here than some places, but the juiciness and controlled char of finished dishes suggests that your patience isn’t going unrewarded. My pick of the shish is the adana, a succulent blend of minced beef and lamb, capsicum and spice that’s pressed by hand onto each skewer.
In addition to being served with rice and salad, these shish can also be ordered as kebabs tucked into puffy sleeves of Turkish bread alongside red onion, diced tomato, some leafy things and nothing else. No questions about sauces. No egg upsell. No double-meat option. These are minimalist kebabs that have been deliberately designed to not just highlight the quality of the meat, but also to quietly reinforce the restaurant’s less-is-more mantra. Vic Park’s menu might not cover as much ground as Mount Lawley’s, but it takes diners closer to Turkey.
That kebab bread, by the by, is one of many items made in-house. There’s also an assortment of boat-shaped pide that are either baked open-faced or sealed like a pastie depending on its filling. They’re good eating, but my picks among the baked goods are the lahmacun (thin flatbreads of impressive finesse topped with minced lamb and beef) and the excellent baklava, dense with walnuts and crowned with tanned, ruffled edges of crunchy yufka pastry.
Yet for all the understated detail in its cooking, Antep Mangal looks a lot like your average neighbourhood kebab joint. Diners order at a long counter. (The layout of the room occasionally causes bottlenecks if there’s a queue and staff need to deliver food to dine-in guests.) Extraction fans work valiantly to yank out all that smoke but aren’t quite strong enough. The fridge is filled with multinational soft drinks. But don’t be fooled. Beneath this unassuming exterior is a shop cooking and serving some quietly impressive Turkish food. I dig it. A lot.
But I also dig Turkish cuisine’s wilder, less-classical moments too, not least the restorative power of a saucy, two-handed kebab at the end of a night out. (But please don’t bring alcohol to Antep Mangal, it’s a halal restaurant.)
Some might suggest that makes me a bogan. I prefer the term open-minded. This town, I think, is big enough for both styles of Turkish food.
For anyone keen to think and eat outside the (meat) box, Vic Park awaits.
The low-down
Atmosphere: a promising second act gently expanding the public’s perception of Turkish food.
Go-to dishes: adana shish kebab ($20), Yaprak doner plate ($27), lahmahcun ($10).
Drinks: the Turkish salted drinking yoghurt ayran supplemented with a fridge full of multinational soft drinks (no BYO).
Cost: about $65 for two people, excluding drinks.
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
