Turkish in Phoenix

This family-owned Middle Eastern restaurant serves award-winning food. The Tempe eatery’s all-you-can-eat lunch buffet is available on weekdays for $10 and includes a selection of salads, sides, meats, vegetarian entrées, dishes like lasagna made with lamb and cream sauce, and warm pita to sop up various dips. For dinner, the Al Amir combo with creamy hummus, minty tabbouleh, dolmas (stuffed grape leaves), feta, baba ghanouj, mjadera, loubyeh, moist falafel, chunks of medium-rare lamb, outstanding chicken, and kafta kabob will provide enough to fill up two bellies for $29.95. Café Istanbul and Market also has a wide variety of sandwiches like shawarma, gyros, falafel, ma’anek (Lebanese lamb), soujok (Armenian beef sausage), baked lamb, and lamb tongue sautéed with garlic lemon. Save room for dessert, including chocolate mou, peach melba, nissreen cocktail, and Mike’s specialty (ice cream with melon and chocolate sauce).

This independent business, owned by the three San brothers, serves up luscious Turkish food at prices that let ASU work-study students feast like spoiled trust-funders. Don't be fooled by Styrofoam plates and fast-food-style plastic trays -- the food here is cooked daily, from scratch, using family recipes that have been passed down for generations. Vegetarians can get their fill on light, crispy falafel, refreshing tabouli, or pita with hummus, while meat-eaters can dig in to plates of juicy, flame-broiled kabobs. Tender beef and chicken doner -- marinated and roasted on a vertical spit -- are the house specialties.

TurkDish is a small, family-run Turkish restaurant tucked into a Chandler shopping center. The restaurant’s specialty is homemade döner, sometimes known as Turkish gyro, a highly seasoned, thinly sliced roasted meat that’s deliciously tender and juicy. Other specialties include Adana kebab, a spicy sausage-like grilled meat, and Iskender kebab, featuring slinky döner bathed in a buttery tomato sauce. TurkDish also offers a top-notch selection of meze starters, including a wonderful baba ganoush and lahmacun, a thin flatbread that’s sometimes known as Turkish pizza. For dessert, don’t miss the restaurant’s baked-to- order cheese pastry, kunefe. Even if you skip dessert, though, your meal at TurkDish will inevitably be capped off by a complimentary cup of dark Turkish tea.