Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
575 Bank St., 343-688-0088, ottawa.sultanahmet.ca
Open: Monday 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Tuesday to Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Prices: Appetizers $9 to $23, doner and kebab dinners $19 to $39
Access: Steps or ramp to front door, wheelchair-accessible washroom on ground floor, other washrooms downstairs
Above and below the entrance to Sultan Ahmet Turkish Cuisine Ottawa are reminders of what it used to be.
Look down and you’ll see the initials “CT” pressed into the steps. Overhead is a clocktower still bearing the logo of Ottawa’s first Clocktower Brew Pub, which poured beers for almost three decades on Bank Street, just south of the Queensway.
But restaurateur Sercun Ozturk and his partners expunged every other trace of the Clocktower with an “A-to-Z” renovation before they opened Sultan Ahmet in early April this year, a few months after the pub brand’s inaugural location closed. (Three Clocktower Brew Pubs remain in Ottawa.)
We’ve been to Ozturk’s restaurant three times this fall, and it consistently impressed us with the calibre of its reasonably priced food and its attentive service.
This restaurant that seats about 100 in a bright, modern, comfortable dining room certainly ranks among Ottawa’s largest Turkish restaurants, along with the Turkish Kebab House, which opened in Kanata in 2022 and recently spun off a second location on Bank Street near Walkley Road.
Sultan Ahmet is also part of a chain launched just a few years ago, which has locations in Mississauga, Hamilton, and Oakville. Ozturk says that while he brought eight chefs from Turkey to work in his restaurant’s kitchen, they follow the recipes of his Toronto-based partner, who just happens to be named Sultan Ahmet.
Sultan Ahmet’s menu, like a prospectus filled with photos and detailed descriptions, offers a multitude of halal kebabs of chicken, beef and lamb, supported by salads and dips that celebrate simplicity and freshness.
The special mixed grill dinner for two ($95), a feast for curious, empty-stomached carnivores, was large enough to generate significant leftovers.
Its warmed platter teemed with well-prepared and tasty char-grilled meat, including two lamb chops, a lamb kebab skewer, a juicy chicken kebab skewer, a lightly spicy beef skewer and two minced beef (kofte) kebabs. In case we still needed more meat, there were shavings of still-moist chicken and beef doner meat too, as well as extra-crispy fries, more than enough tomato-y bulgur and salad.
The mixed grill dinner for one ($39 for a beef kebab, a veal skewer and a chicken skewer) was more modest but still generous. From what I saw as it passed by my table, the special mix grill dinner for six ($225) was truly epic.
However, passing up samplers and committing to a specific main, with just one kind of kebab and a sauce, had its benefits too.
We were all big fans of two Ali Nazik dishes ($32). This specialty of Turkey’s Gaziantep province featured juicy lamb or chicken kebabs on top of a luscious purée of smokey eggplant and garlicky yogurt.
Another regional dish, which excited me less, was the plate of Iskender kebabs that coated either chicken ($27) or beef doner meat ($30) in tomato sauce and melted butter and served it with a giant dollop of yogurt on the side.
Excellent for sharing was a platter of beyti sarma kebab ($29), in which beef chunks were wrapped in flatbread and topped with tomato sauce.
For lighter appetites, I could recommend the lahmacun with salad ($18), a thin flatbread topped with minced beef and a tomato-based spread, which we wrapped around greens, onions and tomatoes.
More substantial was a beef doner pide ($23), one of more than a dozen heftier, cheesier, boat-shaped breads on the menu.
For vegetarians at this meat-forward restaurant, the vegetarian or spinach pide or the falafel platter, perhaps preceded by one of several house salads, might be ways to go.
All of our starters were straightforward and top-notch, from bowls of savoury lentil soup and creamy chicken soup to superior dips that ranged from hummus to baba ghanoush to ezme, a slightly spicy tomato-based dip, to cacik, a yogurt-based dip. ($10 individually, $23 for all four dips, both with bread).
Most dessert choices here were types of baklava brought in from Montreal, served optionally with ice cream, either made in Canada or brought in from Turkey. I’ve recently confessed my enthusiasm for Syrian baklava, but I might yet be swayed by the more syrupy and even creamy options at Sultan Ahmet.
Sultan Ahmet is, of course, not licensed. But it does serve many mocktails and fruity or candy-based shakes, as well as Turkish coffee and tea and Barbican, the non-alcoholic malt drink.
In addition to lunch and dinner, Sultan Ahmet serves Turkish breakfasts on weekends, when reservations are required.
Ozturk says his restaurant’s been well received in the seven months since it opened. I’ve seen that on weekends, in particular, it can be packed and boisterous.
It used to be that Ottawa’s only Turkish dining option was the Little Turkish Village in Orléans, which has been open for more than three decades. But Sultan Ahmet belongs to a wave of 10 or so Turkish restaurants that have opened in Ottawa in the last two years, from quick, takeout-focused shops in suburban strip malls to larger, higher-volume, dine-in eateries.
Ozturk is magnanimous about his rivals. “All Turkish restaurants are doing very good, people like Turkish cuisine,” he says.
But in my experience, among the restaurants like it, Sultan Ahmet is one of the very best.
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