Once you taste Turkish food in situ, the craving is real. And the dearth of this cuisine in LA is strange given the breadth of cuisines blanketing the city. Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Bill Addison hopes that changes with a new find — Lokl Haus, a Santa Monica coffee shop.
Istanbul native Senem Sanli worked as a private chef before the pandemic. She and her husband regrouped after the lockdown to open Lokl Haus. While the menu aims for broad appeal with granola bowls and coffee cake, Addison is drawn to the traditional Turkish breakfast. His dish of choice is çilbir, composed of poached eggs blanketed in garlicky yogurt and doused with brown butter and Aleppo pepper.
Sanli missed the doner kebabs she grew up eating in Istanbul so she hired Hüsnü Kahramanoğlu for his mastery in this arena. He layers beef shoulder with marinated lamb fat cap to enrich the flavor, and serves doner kebabs on Wednesday and Saturday evenings. More traditional kebabs cooked over an open flame are available on Sundays.
"The Ottoman Empire, during its moment, had such a profound cultural influence over so many regions as that, even as the world and governments and boundaries have evolved, something about the flavors of that food resonates through so many cultures," Addison says.