Review: Bosphorus Turkish Kebap has a small menu, but is big on portions and heart

Whenever someone asks me about my favourite neighbourhoods for food in Singapore, I give them either of two answers. One is Joo Chiat which, while now very gentrified, still rocks awesome nyonya and Peranakan grub. 

The other is Kampong Glam where, if you know where to look, you can dig into excellent heritage Ottoman fare — a mix of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Eastern European cuisine.

While you’ll find most of these restaurants serving Ottoman fare around the junctions of Bussorah Street, Arab Street and Baghdad Street, there are outliers that operate at the outer ends of the neighbourhood. 

One such outlier is Bosphorus Turkish Kebap, housed at the basement of Golden Mile Food Centre, alongside scores of other Muslim-run stalls. It’s also one that I’ve long wanted to try after reading about its charming business owner.

The backstory

Bosphorus Turkish Kebap was opened in 2021 by Oktay Sahin, the sixth generation of a family of Turkish food vendors. 

After operating various F&B businesses in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Bali, and Jakarta, he’s since settled down in Singapore, dedicating every day of the week to his humble hawker stall. 

Today, he has several assistants who help run the stall, but you’ll see Sahin himself at the stall on most days of the week. On our visit, we were animatedly welcomed with a warm smile as he rattled off crowd-favourites from the menu.

Our verdict

Bosphorus Turkish Kebap is not like the other Turkish restaurants in Kampong Glam. 

In fact, if it were located alongside the tens of full-service restaurants on the more touristy streets of Kampong Glam, —where the menus are a lot more expansive — Bosphorus would not seem especially remarkable.

Not having been to Turkiye before, I can’t really say whether the food here is authentic, but what it does here — a repertoire of chicken kebab as the star player, served with pasta, butter rice, salad, and fries — it does very well.

The owner is passionate about providing healthy food cooked from the heart — it’s even a tagline you’ll see plastered over the various signages. 

Holding true to this, you can easily see that many of the ingredients and savoury sauces, particularly the kebab, butter rice, and baklava, are laboriously prepared from scratch.

The portion sizes are also huge, considering most of the mains are remarkably reasonably priced around $8. So much so that you can be confident you’re getting one of the more nourishing and substantial meals by opting for Bopshorus at Golden Mile Centre. 

There’s a lot more depth to Turkish food that isn’t offered here, but if you’re new to the cuisine, Bosphorus Turkish Kebap is a very enticing and value-for-money gateway to get started.

What it’s good for

First things first, the chicken kebab.

The first sight at the stall is the grandiose vertical rotisserie that you sometimes see at pasar malams (night markets) around the city — stall holders slowly grilling up large stacks of chicken that are then sliced off onto a tray at that bottom at regular intervals. 

The marinated meat, piled onto your plate in varying thickness, is rich with oregano, parsley, cumin, and a hint of mint. The outer bits are more charred and smoky, adding depth to the overall taste.

It’s altogether very decent chicken — tender, not quite as moist and juicy as I had hoped, but certainly not dry. There’s also a spicy red sauce that comes with the chicken, umami and tangy with tomato paste, some kind of vinegar, cayenne pepper, garlic, and probably lots of hot chillies.

The chicken kebab with butter rice (S$8) sees copious pieces of the chicken on a bountiful bed of butter rice, which is not as heavy or jelak as it sounds. Instead, the still-warm long-grain rice is almost fluffy and lightly aromatic with the savouriness of butter. It holds its own against the punchiness of the meat.

It comes with a tangy yoghurt-based sauce drizzled over a fresh mess of crunchy lettuce leaves, purple cabbage, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, and some olives. There’s also a whole roasted long green chilli that pretty much appears on every plate of Turkish roast or grilled meat — fairly mild and slightly sweet and fragrant. 

Altogether, this dish is a good balance of meat, greens, and carbs.

Don’t want rice? The chef’s platter (S$8) offers the same meat and salad toppings on top of fusilli and something Sahin calls Grandmother’s fried crispy potatoes. 

The pasta is very typical of places that don’t specialise in, well, pasta — boiled and salted and sprinkled with a bit of pepper. 

The fries are not particularly crispy as its name suggests, but it is very tasty. I’m told that they hand-cut their own fries with fresh potatoes from the market. There’s still a bit of skin left on some sides, which adds texture and that extra, subtle potato flavour that I very much enjoy.

If you haven’t tried the Middle Eastern dessert baklava (S$3 for one or S$10 for five) before, this is as good a chance as any. Its price tag might seem expensive until you realise the effort it takes to make a good one. 

Pistachio and walnuts are crushed to crumbs and filled with layer upon layer of thin filo pastry, before being drizzled with sugar-honey syrup. The version here is not incredible (and in fact a bit on the wetter side) instead of crispy, but if you can get past that, the light nutty sweetness will leave you melting a little inside.

What it could improve on

The dishes at Bosphorus Turkish Kebap are generally delicious and flavourful, though a few extra details, particularly the crispiness of the fries and the flakiness of the baklava, can make this joint excellent. 

Also, there may be no better companion than an invigorating glass of Turkish tea to offer an even more special Turkish experience — if only they served it here.

HungryGoWhere paid for its meal at this restaurant for this review.

For more reviews, check out our take on the latest cafe concept by Tendon Kohaku, Kohaku Sabo, and what we thought of this cafe selling Korean-inspired desserts.

Do explore the new GrabFood Dine-in service for awesome deals.   

You can book a ride to Bosphorus Turkish Kebab at Golden Mile Food Centre.