Uskudar Restaurant in New York
Host: Our restaurant of the week is Uskudar located on the upper east side of New York City. Named after a beautiful historic neighborhood in Instanbul, this cozy place serves delicious Turkish food with warm and a smile.
Ibrahim Ozdemir: My name is Ibrahim Ozdemir. I'm from Turkey. It looks like ‘87 I remember I came to America. For two years I work at the Royal Carribean Cruise Liner Ship in Miami and then I came to New York so I work for somebody for seven years in another Turkish restaurant. And in 11 years I am the owner of this restaurant.
The Uskudar is—the customers ask what Uskudar means. I tell the, Uskudar is a very old town in Istanbul and these are all old pictures from the Uskudar. So that means the Uskudar is a very nice village by the seas of Turkey in Istanbul.
The specialty is lamb, chicken and the fish. We have Mediterranean dishes and also we have all the appetizer in vegetables like eggplant, salad. Also we have nice vegetable casserole in the tomato sauce. It seems like 10% people they take the vegetable casserole and a couple of appetizer and they're happy.
Male: The food is magnificent! It’s healthy and Turkish food is cooked slowly and because of that it’s not pushed which means it’s always to perfection. Of course it’s to everyone’s taste. I mean not everybody loves the same thing. But if you like lamb, you mush try the Turkish style lamb otherwise that means you never eaten lamb before.
The fish they're very good in cooking fish—the Turkish chefs and generally speaking I like it.
Ibrahim Ozdemir: The customer is coming here and say it’s a nice atmosphere, nice food and friendly service and we always keep the place clean and nice. And we never let them feel bad here to customer like commercial business. We just like welcome home business that’s why also 60%-70% customer are the old people in this restaurant and they are really happy here.
Female: I like this food and this place. The rice! I have chicken.
Male: We have the eggplant that we finished already and we had salad. We had lamb kabab and we have the mix of everything because the kids like it. It’s an excellent food, cooked well and taste to the Turkish food. I eat here all the time. I live upstate in New York and when I come to city I always look one of my favorite here.
Ibrahim Ozdemir: Turkish kitchen is very new in America. I hope one day you’re going to try and you will never go to other restaurants anymore because it’s really good and you have to try it!
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