EMPIRE TURKISH GRILL-Reviews-Habit-forming: Empire Turkish Grill is cause for celebration

Habit-forming: Empire Turkish Grill is cause for celebration

By ALISON COOK - Houston Chronicle - 10.04.2002

Back in the mists of time, if anyone had tried to tell me that one day a Turkish restaurant would occupy the digs of that fusty continental war horse the Lantern Inn, I would have been seriously skeptical.

That was then, and this is most assuredly now. The relevant stretch of Memorial Drive -- a mile or two on either side of Beltway 8 -- has moved way beyond white-bread country-clubbiness. Indika, the inventive neo-Indian restaurant, is here, and until recently the King & I, that estimable Thai kitchen, was part of the increasingly sophisticated mix. There's Russian. There's French. All bets are off.

Now comes the Empire Turkish Grill, which should give Memorial-area residents cause for celebration. Friendly, civilized, reasonably priced and open seven days a week, Empire is the sort of place that is a boon to any neighborhood.

And then there's the cooking.

When I first tried Turkish food at Istanbul Grill in Rice Village, I was captivated. At Empire, the city's second Turkish establishment, I continue to be smitten by the sunny Mediterranean flavors; by the sparkling array of vegetable salads, side dishes and dips; and by the simple grilled meats and plump rounds of sesame-quilted flatbread.

Empire has a different personality than the frenetic, Inner-Loopy, bohemian Istanbul Grill, with its close quarters and perpetual parking scrum in the postage-stamp lot.

The serene Empire registers as more genteel, with apricot-colored walls hung with a few quiet artifacts, linen-clad tables spaced wide apart. (Believe me, the Lantern Inn never looked so airy, or so good.) If you translated a Southern tearoom to the shores of the Bosporus, you'd have the gestalt of this relaxing room. Tucked away perpendicular to Memorial, it feels like a secret.

If there's any justice, it won't remain one. Empire is the rare restaurant that can make carnivores and vegetarians equally happy. The food doesn't have quite the verve and funk of Istanbul Grill's, but there's a subtle finesse at work in this kitchen that offers its own rewards. The place could change your attitude toward Middle Eastern desserts. And while not an el-cheapo ethnic feed, Empire delivers a dining experience that feels special and classy at a price that is a relative bargain.

The must-order here is the platter, either small or large, of assorted cold appetizers, ingeniously served on an oyster plate. Each indentation gets a dab of something delicious: the subtlest, fluffiest eggplant dip with just a tinge of smoke, for instance, with a menu explanation that gives a face ("Papa Janus") to the name baba ghanouj. Or a light, tingly eggplant salad threaded with dill. And since the Turks are eggplant maestros, maybe even a ratatouille-like eggplant sauté with a rich tomato tang and a caramelized bottom note.

Eggplant isn't the half of the cold vegetable dishes. There are graceful versions of parsley-and-cracked-wheat tabbouleh and the sesame-and-chickpea dip hummus. There's ezme, a particular favorite of mine for the way chopped walnuts add a meaty crunch to the mince of tomato, onion and faintly hot red pepper.

Best of all, perhaps, is the stunning yogurt spread called lebni, a rich, soft cheese that has been mixed with walnuts and dill. Scooped up with one of the Empire's fresh, sturdy sesame loaves, the lebni makes a textbook case for the way the humblest ingredients can be transformed into something utterly luxurious.

(As a $3.75 luxury, the lebni is something you might want to take home and keep in your refrigerator; with a little flatbread, it makes a killer breakfast.)

Some of the cold appetizers here can only be had a la carte, such as the Turkish classic of honeydew melon and feta cheese, or the wonderfully slip-slidey stuffed baby eggplant called imam bayildi, with its suave cargo of garlicky tomato and onion. Stuffed grape leaves here are notable for their genuinely leafy quality -- feel those ribs! -- and a laid-back filling of pine nuts and rice barely sweetened with chopped raisins. Add a spritz from the ubiquitous lemon wedges so necessary to a Turkish meal, and you're in business.

About those lemon wedges: Turkish cuisine is neither wildly nor complicatedly spicy. The tastes are clean and elemental; the few ingredients converse quietly rather than talking over one another like the characters in Gosford Park. Using lemon or yogurt to animate the flavors is part of the deal. You're expected to customize. To that end, you also can employ one of the relish-y salads (ezme is ideal) or the toasty zaatar dip that comes on every table, a mixture of green herbs from the marjoram/thyme family along with olive oil, roasted sesame seeds and tart ground sumac. It's habit-forming stuff.

One dish that springs to life with a bit of lebni or yogurt is a thin, flat, beautifully browned zucchini omelet called mucver. It's a good choice for vegetarians or for a weekend brunch. I was less enamored of Empire's cigar-shaped phyllo-pastry rolls stuffed with feta cheese, which seemed dryish and austere.

Among the entrees, the chargrilled lamb chops are spectacular. Four of them, cooked perfectly medium rare as requested, were the sort of thing tablemates fight over.

The various other kebab varieties struck me as perfectly nice, if less thrilling. The chicken was moist; the cubed lamb really tasted of lamb; the ground-beef adana kebab was pleasant enough. Only the doner kebab -- shards of lamb sliced off a vertical spit -- failed to measure up. The thin slices were too dry and (there's that word again) austere to make much of an impression.

Next time -- and there will definitely be a next time -- I want to try one of the kebabs layered with yogurt and fried bread, which sounds altogether juicier and more promising.

Cabbage leaves stuffed with ground beef and rice, pillowy-soft and bathed in tomato broth, are straight-ahead comfort food. A stew of lamb and okra is an interesting novelty, not unlike a thin, tart, tomatoey gumbo.

But aside from the cold vegetable dishes and the lamb chops, it's the Empire desserts that I dream about. Middle Eastern confections often are cloyingly sweet, but not here. Keskul, a shivery-light milk pudding flavored with almonds, seems innocent and sophisticated at once. Dried apricots stuffed with thickened cream and pine nuts taste ancient, almost primal. But it is the "bottom-of-the-cauldron" dessert, a roll of vanilla-scented pudding caramelized to a dark brown on its exterior surface, that wows: If you're sick unto death of crème brûlée, try this.

At half the price.

And don't blame me if you wake up at 3 a.m. mumbling, "I wish I had some kazandibi."