Tulum in Balaclava serves modern Turkish mezze and is one of the best restaurants in Melbourne
There’s a fresh new look and menu at Balaclava’s favourite Turkish restaurant Tulum and with the service on point and food so tasty, your pregnant dining companions won’t want to leave — even if they’re having contractions, writes Dan Stock
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My friend opposite is looking a little flushed, a little distracted.
“This is so, so good,” she says while tearing a warm, golden-crusted, chewy white roll and dipping it into a cool almond soup while simultaneously taking a peek at her phone.
“Five minutes apart, 30 seconds. I’m fine. I love the spinach, too, with such sweet prunes and those puckering yoghurt shards. I’m so glad I’m not missing this.”
“This” is dinner at Balaclava’s three-year-old modern Turkish restaurant Tulum, and “that” distraction is my friend in labour.
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Such is the pull of chef Coskun Uysal’s cooking that takes a handful of Istanbul and mixes it with a Melbourne sensibility to create something truly unique that not even the imminent birth of her first child could keep my friend away from seeing its new incarnation.
Coskun has taken lessons learnt from Tulum’s previous versions — from the fine-dining take on home recipes it opened with to its more recent degustation-only tours of Turkish regions — and transformed his critically acclaimed destination diner into something more accessible to the local neighbourhood.
Now in partnership with Kemal Barut from Lezzet down the road, Coskun has overhauled the restaurant and menu, adding more seats to the former and more dishes to the latter.
And it’s worked.
This Wednesday night the place is packed, every table full by 7pm. There are diners outside enjoying the last of the daylight saving light, while inside the newly renovated space is a multi-generational mix of greys and goatees, matrons and moustaches all here for the buzz of a restaurant in full swing and food that’s deeply delicious to a fault.
The room is beautiful, comfortable and sexy, with dark panels and exposed bricks, timber and marble and leather all adding good looks. The lighting is flattering, the Anatolian pop infectious, the staff welcoming, knowledgeable and efficient.
And the food? Better than ever.
You can still take a seven-course tour of the regions ($95), but the new menu is more mix-and-match mezze in which nothing save a few bigger plates breaks the $20 mark. It’s generous in the you’re-a-guest-in-my-house way of the Middle East, with such touches as an extra bowl of warm rolls arriving unbidden to mop up various sauces late in the meal just one example of hospitality encoded into DNA.
Grab a group, for there is so much you’ll want to try across both the menu and tight wine list that smatters a few locals throughout Turkish labels/varietals where there’s interesting drinking to be had at the $10 glass/$55 bottle mark. There’s Efes beer ($12) and raki by double shot and bottle and, for those expecting, mocktails that include a terrific fizzy pomegranate number ($10.50).
A supremely clever take on icli kofte sees spiced lamb mince served in pie form, the slice rich with walnuts and cumin. A pond of yoghurt sauce sprinkled with parsley dust and dotted with salgam, a red pickle juice served on the streets of Istanbul, finishes a classic reimagined with true class ($18).
Even better, local calamari sliced into slivers, blanched and soaked in buttermilk until silken are served with lemony breadcrumbs and a lick of harissa for a terrific take on a traditional noodle dish ($18). Huge Clarence River prawns are chucked on the grill before resting on tarhana, a fermented grain soup, and finished with the namesake soft tulum cheese ($9.50 each).
Meaty sardines come splayed and served with batons of raki-soused cucumber, a bonito broth poured at the table adding a hit of oiliness that the fresh dill and fennel fronds atop counters with aniseedy bite ($17).
That moppable almond soup surrounds a puck of spoon-soft kohlrabi topped with whole fennel seeds, slices of pickled grapes and crushed smoked almonds hiding under more fronds and a few petals. Dots of oil — both olive and dill — complete a plate that’s pretty, delicious ($16).
More wiping the bowl clean thanks to the burnt butter and garlic yoghurt sauce that comes with the manti, tiny meat-filled dumplings delicate and dexterous ($18). A blizzard of Turkish maras chilli and dried mint atop finishes a plate that caused both my pulse to quicken and my friend’s contractions to lengthen.
“Four minutes, 45 seconds, I reckon I can do dessert.”
A puff of smoked eggplant cream that tops tahini ice cream is interesting but could do with more cumin-caramel to tie the lot together ($16), but the walnut and semolina halva with pomegranate granita is a knockout ($16).
High-end cooking smarts now in an accessible format at unbeatable prices, Tulum is an overnight success three years in the making.
And my friend? The next day she was joined by a gorgeous, healthy girl with a full head of hair and a strangely strong penchant for terrific Turkish food.
Tulum
217 Carlisle St, Balaclava
Ph: 9525 9127
Open: Tues-Sat dinner; Sat lunch
Go-to dish: Eriste calamari
Score: 16.5/20
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