Mezze: What Are These Turkish Starters, and How Do You Eat Them Slowly at Kebap with Attitude?
Mezze are small dishes that come to the table together and get shared by everyone sitting at it: dips, pickles, a soup, something fried and still crackling. In Turkey and across the Eastern Mediterranean they open the meal and then quietly stay for the rest of it. At Kebap with Attitude in Berlin Mitte we make all of ours in house, serve them with bread from a bakery in Neukölln, and put them down in the middle of the table, where they belong.
CONTENTS:
What Is Mezze?
The Turkish Table
Cold First, Then Warm
Rakı, the Old Companion
Our Mezze, One by One
The Mixed Mezze Tray
A Table Without Meat
Mezze for a Crowd
Gipsstraße 2
FAQ
What Is Mezze?
Ask five people where the word comes from and you'll get five stories. The most convincing one traces it to the Persian maze, a word for taste, or a bite of something. It travelled west with traders and cooks and settled in kitchens from Istanbul to Beirut, from Athens to Sarajevo, each of them adding its own dishes and its own spelling. In Turkish it's meze. On our menu, as on most menus in Germany, it's mezze.
The dishes change from one country to the next, sometimes from one street to the next. What stays the same is the idea. Nobody at the table has their own plate. Food arrives in small bowls and goes in the middle, bread gets torn and passed around, and everybody eats a little of everything. A mezze meal has no real beginning and no tidy end. It just carries on for as long as the conversation does.
The Turkish Table
If you've only ever eaten mezze as a starter, a Turkish table can come as a surprise. Nothing is cleared away to make room for the main course. The bowls stay where they are, the bread basket gets refilled, and when the grilled meat arrives, it simply joins what's already there. People go back to the hummus between bites of kebap. The pickles get finished somewhere around dessert.
There's a rhythm to it, and it's a patient one. You order a few things, see what goes first, order a few more. Variety beats quantity: four or five different bowls make a better table than two big ones. And there's always bread, because half the pleasure of mezze is in the dragging and dipping and wiping, the last streak of tahini rescued with a heel of crust.
We're a full service restaurant, and this is the kind of eating we like to see in our dining room. Nobody's rushing you out.
Cold First, Then Warm
Turkish kitchens split their mezze into two camps, and our menu does the same.
The cold ones, soğuk meze, are the ones waiting for you when you sit down. They're the dips and purées and pickles, the dishes that taste better for having had time to settle. Ours are Hummus, Mama Ganoush and our Homemade Turşu.
The warm ones, sıcak meze, come out of the kitchen as they're ready, still hot, sometimes still sizzling. They're where the crunch and the frying happen. On our menu that means Lentil Soup, Turkish Empanadas, Mini Falafel, Zucchini Feta Fritters and Cauli Tahini.
A good table needs both. The cold dishes give you something to start on before you've even taken off your coat. The warm ones arrive just as the first bowls are running low, and the contrast between them, cool and creamy against hot and crisp, is a big part of why mezze are so hard to stop eating.
Rakı, the Old Companion
In Turkey, mezze have a drinking partner, and it's been the same one for generations. Rakı is a clear, anise flavoured spirit that turns a cloudy, milky white the moment water or ice touches it. Turks call it aslan sütü, lion's milk. A long evening around a table of mezze and rakı even has its own name, the rakı sofrası, and it's less a meal than a way of spending time: a sip, a bite, a story, another sip.
The pairing makes sense once you've tried it. The anise slices through the richness of hummus and smoky aubergine, and it resets your palate between something salty and something fried. Neither the food nor the drink is the main event. They take turns.
We serve Yeni Rakı two ways. As a shot, for the classic taste, or in our Yeni Rakı Margarita, which brings that anise into a cocktail. If you'd rather keep the evening alcohol free, our homemade Ayran and a glass of Turkish çay belong at a mezze
table just as much.
Our Mezze, One by One
Everything below is made in our kitchen. We call that Natural Attitude, and in practice it means honest ingredients and no shortcuts, whether it's a sauce, a pickle or a dip.
Hummus. Chickpeas blended until they turn silky, served with bread. It's the dish people order without looking at the menu, and it's usually gone first.
Mama Ganoush. Our version of smoked aubergine purée, with garlic, olive oil and parsley, served with bread. The smoke is the point. It's earthy and a little bitter in the best way.
Homemade Turşu. Turkish pickled vegetables, finished with sumac and parsley. Sour, crunchy, bright. You eat a piece between richer bites and suddenly everything tastes new again.
Lentil Soup. A Turkish lentil soup with lemon and parsley, served with bread. Squeeze the lemon in properly. On a grey Berlin evening there are few better ways to start.
Turkish Empanadas. Three pieces filled with beef, served with yoghurt and lemon. The only mezze on our menu with meat in it, and a natural lead in to the kebaps.
Mini Falafel. Small, crisp falafel with sweet tahini, pomegranate, mint and sesame. The sweetness of the tahini against the herbs is what makes them.
Zucchini Feta Fritters. Homemade fried nuggets of zucchini and feta with a garlic dip. Golden on the outside, soft and salty in the middle, and hot enough that you should probably wait a minute. Nobody does.
Cauli Tahini. Spicy fried cauliflower on a bed of tahini, with sesame, pomegranate, cilantro pesto and garlic, served with bread. It looks like a lot is going on, and it is. This is the one people come back and order again.
A few dishes from the rest of the menu are just as happy in the middle of the table. Our Beetroot salad brings together beetroot, grapes, walnuts, mint and yoghurt, and a bowl of Fries or Truffle Fries Delüks never stays full for long.
The Mixed Mezze Tray
Deciding is the hardest part, so we made it optional. Our Mixed Mezze Tray lets you pick six mezze from the dishes marked on our menu, served together with bread. It works for two people who want to graze, and it works just as well as the opening act for a bigger table.
If you want a little guidance, think in contrasts. One or two cold dips, something sharp, two or three things from the fryer. Hummus, Mama Ganoush, Turşu, Mini Falafel, Zucchini Feta Fritters and Cauli Tahini would cover pretty much everything our kitchen does, from smooth to crisp and from cool to properly hot.
A Table Without Meat
Mezze have always been generous to people who don't eat meat, and ours are no exception. Apart from the Turkish Empanadas, everything on our mezze menu is vegetarian: the dips, the pickles, the soup, the falafel, the fritters and the Cauli Tahini.
That makes a meat free evening at our place very easy to put together. Start with a tray, then pick any kebap on the menu and have it made with falafel, halloumi or Planted. If you eat vegan, tell our team when you order and they'll walk you through which dishes work for you.
Mezze for a Crowd
There's a reason mezze show up at every Turkish celebration. Put a dozen small dishes in the middle of a long table and people start talking, passing, reaching over each other. The ice breaks itself. That's why mezze are such a big part of how we do birthdays, team dinners and private parties.
Our restaurant in Berlin Mitte seats up to 120 guests across the dining room, the front terrace and the garden out back. Open with mezze for the table, let everyone choose their own kebap, and the evening mostly runs itself.
Gipsstraße 2
We've been cooking on Gipsstraße since 2019, a few steps from Rosenthaler Platz. Come with people you like, order more mezze than seems sensible, add a kebap or two and maybe a Yeni Rakı, and don't look at the clock. If staying in sounds better tonight, we're on Wolt, Lieferando and Uber Eats too.
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