Name: Ulucay Tantuni
Address: Bahçekapı, 2565. Sk. No: 16, Etimesgut, Ankara, 06797, TR
Telephone: (0312) 278 33 01
Price range: €
Rating: 4.2

Türkiye

Turkey

Ankara

Etimesgut

Ulucay Tantuni

Beef cut into tiny strips, boiled soft and then fried fast on a huge domed sac with cottonseed oil and salt, rolled into a thin lavash with tomato, onion, parsley and sumac, and eaten standing with a glass of şalgam: tantuni is the street food of Mersin, on Türkiye's Mediterranean coast, and the city will tell you that nowhere else gets it right. The name is said to echo the tan-tun sound of the cook's metal spatula hitting the sac as the meat is chopped and turned, though that is the kind of story that is repeated more than it is proved. It spread from Mersin to Adana and then to Istanbul from the 1980s, and today a tantuni shop is recognisable from the street by the wide, slightly concave griddle and the queue of people eating out of paper.

The method is specific and the cut is small. Lean beef, sometimes with a little tail fat, is cut into strips a few millimetres across and boiled in salted water until tender, which is what allows the fast frying later; the cooked meat is kept in its broth until ordered. On the sac, a portion is thrown onto the hottest part with a ladle of broth, a spoon of cottonseed oil, which has the high smoke point and clean taste the dish depends on, salt and often a pinch of pul biber, and it is chopped and tossed for a minute until the liquid has gone and the meat has caught at the edges. It is scooped into a lavash that has been warmed on the cooler rim of the sac, with sliced tomato, onion with sumac and parsley, rolled tight and often brushed with the oil from the pan. A dürüm is the roll; the same filling in half a loaf is ekmek arası tantuni. Pickled chillies and şalgam, the fermented turnip juice, are the standard escorts.

Judge the meat first: it should be fine, tender and juicy, seasoned with salt and the sharpness of sumac, and it should taste of the sac, lightly fried rather than stewed. Dry, grey or chewy meat means it was boiled too long or fried without enough fat; a greasy wrap means too much oil or the wrong oil. The lavash should be thin and soft, warmed so it rolls without cracking, and the vegetables fresh and cut thin. Mark down a tantuni padded out with onion to hide a small portion of meat, cold tomato juice soaking the bottom of the roll, a wrap that falls apart, chicken sold as the default rather than as an option, and any version where the meat has been pre-fried and held, which turns it to leather. A good one is finished in the time it takes to drink the şalgam.

Tantuni

Tavuk tantuni

Bence oldukça güzel, her şey cok dengeli, içindeki etinin pişmesi, baharatı vs kesinlikle yerken yormuyor. Lavaş çok uygun seçilmiş sert değil, yumusak ve tantuniyle güzel birleşmiş. Fiyat daha uygun olabilirdi, böylelikle 2 dürümle hem keyif alınır hem doyulurdu.

Tantuni anlamında bence ankaradaki en iyi yer. Ne zaman yiyecek olsam uluçay ı tercih ediyorum. Et ve tavuk, ekmek servis ve dürüm secenekleri mevcut. Hem et hem tavuk için sos ekmek baharat lezzetler oldukça birbirini tamamlayan şekilde geliyor. Genel olarak memnun kalıyorum. Fiyat skalası tantuni için bence bir tık yüksek kalıyor.

Ulucay Tantuni

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