Don't Mess With Mezze

The best places I ate in Turkey were tucked into corners and shied into courtyards, as if to do their own thing without the cruise ship tourists tripping over the cobblestones. Like Açık Mutfak in Istanbul's grungedgy Galata district, which seems to exist purely for the pleasure of chef-owner Esra Şener's neighbors and friends. In these places, you don't have to force Adana kebap, French fries or Turkish pizza onto the menu, or have an Armenian woman rolling gözleme in the window, things you ought to have for the foreign visitors. You might re-interpret your grandmother's Anatolian recipes or prepare the comfort food you ate growing up, except you put in the goodies your mother never would, but that you always clamored for as a child.

I had read about Artichoke in Time Out Singapore, and in my ongoing mission to discover good Turkish food here, dropped by for dinner since I was in the area. I had the address, but I stumbled upon its historic Sculpture Square location before I even knew I was trying to look for it. There was chalk on a wall, my food radar started blipping, and I found myself here:

 Stalking Mediterranean flavors at Artichoke.

Merhaba. Except that Artichoke isn't a Turkish restaurant. It bills itself as "modern Moorish cuisine... inspired by the fascinating flavors and smells of Spain, Turkey, Lebanon, Greece and Morocco," but where they had me was the philosophy scrawled on the wall - mezze presentations for sharing at dinner. The interiors reminded me of that bohemian Istanbul enclave of Cihangir, with a retro weighing scale on this counter, an old mixing bowl in that nook, and a well-thumbed notebook right here. "We run a relatively small restaurant," they write. "This means a small kitchen and a lot of love." Other things I love: a small menu, which means each dish is individually and attentively prepared, with the ability to source artisanal ingredients or to make them on site.

That leads us straight to the albondigas. Real meatballs don't jive like sausages; they are not an afterthought, the result of scraping leftovers off the abattoir floor and stuffing them into casing as if nothing had happened. Real meatballs, when viewed as a cross-section, should tell you their life story. The texture and the colors betray exactly what that meatball is made of and at Artichoke, the albondigas are shaped by pork and jamon in a tomato sauce of eggplant, chorizo and manchego. Lookit:

Meat me in St. Luscious.

I thought that the jamon was a really smart move - you don't have to worry about messing with too many spices, which is usually an important component of globular gastronomy. By letting the jamon handle all the flavor infusions, chef Bjorn Shen elevates the mere meatball into levels of mighty machismo - like a genuine cut of meat, it didn't need anything else to enhance its tastes. It did, however, arrive in the great company of its sauce. I came here for Turkish food, Mediterranean, even, but was captured by the Moors and pirated off to somewhere along the Barbary coast, and I didn't care. I'll walk that plank.

 Belle of the meatball.

I have been addicted to bulgur and all types of salad mezzes since Turkey, and I was very happy to see the Forgotten Grain Salad on the Artichoke menu (quinoa, bulgur, wild rice, capers, seeds, nuts, fruits and herbs). How does one not remember how good quinoa and bulgur are?! This made me, and all my runner nutrition sensibilities, so absolutely bananas. I was getting a runner's high just by eating this - quinoa is packed with protein and bulgur with fiber, both bursting with carbohydrates and surging with vitamins and minerals while low in fat - so, a very good fueling meal. Plus, pomegranate seeds and a light touch of yogurt meant each forkful was an explosion of spring in my mouth. It was the Sufism of salad.

Mezze-ticulation.

All of this was doused down with a Mahou Negra, a tar-black dunkel style from Barcelona. Although a commercial brew, it was heartily malty and kept those meatballs honest - perhaps a poor man's Fauxtoberfest. For dessert, I had malabi, a milk pudding infused with rose water that's popular across the Middle East, and better known in Turkey as muhallebieh. The pudding was fantastic, but I felt somewhat cheated by the sliced grapes on top. They didn't quite belong - maybe they were meant to be a creative touch, but I thought it lazy. It was as if they ran out of something else they wanted, and someone thought sliced grapes was a good quick fix. That plus milk pudding made me feel like I should've been in a high chair with a bib around my neck. They would have been better off draping it with chocolate sauce, Saray Muhallebicisi fashion.

 Milky way.

On top of the very strong non-dessert parts of dinner, I really liked how much they seemed to enjoy their restaurant, sometimes stepping out of line - poutine with avocado mousse, really?? - but that's how Istanbullus like it, too. I didn't get to try any of the fish courses, but I appreciated the fresh daily selections - tonight, it was a blue hake. Service was warm and attentive - there were a few things the servers should have known, but they very quickly got the answer without skipping a beat. The next table had a problem with their order - I wasn't paying attention so I couldn't quite tell what, but manager Ronny Choo apologized profusely, after their sincere server had already done the same, and everyone got a round of gelato and coffee on the house. 

Gracious hospitality, just like in Turkey. Prices were more than reasonable for all that fresh produce and hands-to-stove preparation. It goes to show how much better a little restaurant becomes just by being open for all the right reasons.