Charlie Unlu spent more than a decade managing expensive dining rooms — steakhouses, luxury hotels, the Dallas Cowboys organization. He understood restaurants from every angle. What none of those jobs let him do was put his wife Leman’s cooking in front of people.
Her family recipes go back generations in Turkey. They started selling her baklava at farmers markets, built a following, and in early 2025 opened a food hall stall at the Funky Town Food Hall under the name Beren — after their youngest daughter. Fort Worth Magazine called it one of the best new restaurants of the year. It had a waiting list on weekends.
In April 2026 they moved into a real room. Beren Meze & Grill House is at 1216 6th Avenue in the Near Southside, the former Maiden vegan space, four times larger than the food hall stall. Pale olive walls, terra cotta accents, a patio worth sitting on. Full bar, cocktail program. Older daughter Ellen works the floor. Leman is still the one cooking.
Everything starts with bread. The lavash is thin and blistered — made the same way it has been made across Anatolia for centuries, pressed against the wall of a clay oven and peeled off in seconds. The somun is the hearth bread, dense with a proper crust, the everyday loaf you find on breakfast tables from Istanbul to the Black Sea coast. Both arrive housemade before you’ve ordered anything else.
The meze section has the familiar anchors — hummus, baba ghanoush — but the one to order is the pink sultan dip, Beren’s signature whipped yogurt. Turkish yogurt is thicker and tangier than anything commercial, and whipped with the right additions it becomes something you drag bread through until the plate is clean.
The grill drives the menu. Skewers of beef, chicken, lamb, salmon, and seafood cooked over high heat, finished with fresh herbs and traditional garnishes. Kebab traditions in Turkey vary by region and have for centuries — Beren doesn’t overexplain any of it. The smoke does the talking.
The Turkish comfort classics are where the menu opens up for people who don’t know the cuisine well. The İskender plate is thinly carved lamb laid over torn pita bread, soaked in bright tomato sauce, finished with cold yogurt and browned butter poured tableside. The dish was invented in Bursa in the 1860s by a man named İskender Efendi, who repurposed the vertical rotisserie that had existed for centuries and applied it to lamb. His descendants still run the original restaurant in Bursa and hold the trademark. At Beren, the yogurt cuts through the fat of the lamb the way it’s supposed to and the butter arrives still sizzling.
The yağlama is a layered flatbread filled with minced beef and lamb — the Turkish answer to a stuffed bread, the dish that shows up at family tables rather than tourist menus. The tantuni is a spiced beef wrap from Mersin on the southern Mediterranean coast, the meat cooked fast on a flat iron griddle with peppers and tomatoes and wrapped in thin lavash. Mersin residents will tell you their version is the only correct one. They’re probably right.
The cocktail program was built around the food. The Fez — Texas sotol, cucumber-celery cordial, dill oil — makes more sense once you realize dill and cucumber are in half the meze dishes on the table. The Lion’s Milk is vodka, white peach, honey, and raki, named for the Turkish nickname for raki — an anise spirit that clouds white when you add water and has been on Turkish tables longer than anyone can trace. The Turkish Cowboy blends dark rye whiskey with saffron honey, Turkish black tea, and cardamom. The wine list runs heavy on Turkey and the surrounding region, which pairs better with this food than most people expect.
End with the baklava. Leman’s pistachio version is what started all of this and it shows. The Cyprus Gold — walnut and coconut baked pastry topped with sweetened cream — is the other one worth saving room for.
Beren Meze & Grill House is at 1216 6th Avenue in Fort Worth. Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Wednesday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
