Chai Midtown West - New York City

This is a beautiful place to have good food and a relaxing time. Small but food is so delicious you don't care about the size of the restaurant. Perfect date night place for me and my husband.

While the food was excellent, the service was missing. In my ten-year experience with Turkish culture, I have never experienced such a lack of hospitality or kindness, especially in a restaurant.

Turkuaz was a perfect restaurant for our needs. We wanted a casual, affordable restaurant with delicious food near Carnegie Hall. The portions were generous and the salmon in grape leaves was moist and well fed. Our waiter was very attentive and made sure we were able to make our performance.

Extremely nice people made mistakes seem like fun instead of annoying. We were the first people at the place for dinner (Vortheater), and we ordered a glass of wine each. We then saw the manager and the waiter looking high and low for the cork screw — apparently the NUR cork screw. Finally, the waiter had to run into a nearby shop to buy a new one. But through everything, the staff was so nice about it and felt so bad that it was hard to do everything as rolling with it. Meanwhile, as we waited, our appetizers came out, which were delicious. In particular, the spinach pies are worth the trip — slightly flaky dough surrounded spinach and feta, pierced hot and shaped like small taquitos or spring rolls. The whole food was excellent, although a touch on the Bland side. This was easily fixed by asking for a little hot sauce that gave the lamb with baby okra just the right kick. Overall an excellent dinner at a bargain price.

The food was great, however there was a man sitting near our table watching TV on his smart phone with the volume blaring and there was no interference run by the restaurant staff. Very odd.