Gulluoglu Lands in Manhattan

Mavi Boncuk |

Gulluoglu

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

ORDER SOME COFFEE Gulluoglu Turkish cafe on Second Avenue.

By DAVE COOK

Gulluoglu
982 Second Avenue (East 52nd Street); (212) 813-0500; gulluoglubaklava.com.
Imagine, as you enter Gulluoglu and confront the dizzying display of desserts, that you’d never fill up just on baklava.
This trim Turkish bakery and cafe — like its four-year-old sibling in Brooklyn, it’s an outpost of a company in Istanbul — has all the makings of a proper meal. But the printed menu can seem perplexing, like the name of the cafe itself (that second g is silent). Where to begin?
See what’s freshest in the bakery case in back: maybe a sampler of boregi (bur-EE; $2.95 to $4.50), phyllo pastry filled with beef, spinach or cheese, laid out in flaky oblongs and spirals or spread in moister sheets, or a bunlike pogaca (PWAH-chah; $2) pocketed with feta, or a ring-shaped simit ($2.25) encrusted in sesame seeds.
Flag down your server for cilbir (CHIL-bur; $5.95), a sublime retort to omelets, which dunks a poached egg in cool yogurt aswirl with olive oil and paprika; arugula salad with walnuts and pomegranate seeds (small; $5.95); a grilled sandwich like the yengen ($6.95), sporting kashkaval and Turkish sausage on toast; or a kumpir ($6.50), a massive baked potato stuffed with Russian salad.
The sweets counter is calling. Gulluoglu’s baklava, prepared daily in Brooklyn, are less drippingly sweet than the overly familiar Greek version, so they don’t overwhelm flavors like chestnut, sour cherry, hazelnut with milk, and pistachio (tasting portions, $2.75 to $3.75; to go, $10.50 to $16.95 a pound). Braced by a cup of Turkish coffee ($2.25), you might even manage seconds.