Selda Dallas started as a neighborhood Turkish restaurant at 6006 Belt Line Road, and it has since grown into a family of restaurants that includes The Mayor’s House by Selda in Oak Cliff plus locations in Frisco, Las Colinas and San Antonio. Habip Kargin, one of Selda’s chef-owners, once led the Pera restaurants in Dallas, and his kitchen still centers on the charcoal grill. The menu is long, so here’s where to start.
Open with dips for the table. The Hummus and the smoky Grilled Eggplant Salad are the classics, but the one to order is the Spicy Ezme, minced tomatoes and peppers with hot spices, garlic, lemon and pomegranate molasses. Add the Cigar Borek, flaky pastry rolls stuffed with feta and fried, and the Halloumi Cheese, lightly fried and set on roasted peppers and walnuts with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses.
From the oven, the Lahmacun is a thin flatbread baked with ground beef, vegetables and herbs, made for folding and eating by hand, and the Spinach Feta Pide and Meat Pide are heartier flatbreads for the table.
The dish to build the night around is the Ali Nazik. It’s a traditional Turkish plate, and Selda keeps it simple: chargrilled lamb shish laid over smoked eggplant puree, with a bean salad on the side. That’s the whole thing on paper, and it’s more than enough.
Start with the eggplant, because it carries the dish. Eggplant gets its smoke from being cooked over open flame until the skin blackens and the flesh inside collapses, and once it’s pureed it turns soft and silky, with a deep, campfire flavor that runs all the way through. Spread across the plate, it becomes the sauce, the side and the base all at once.
Then the lamb. Cubes of lamb are threaded on skewers and cooked over the grill, so the edges pick up char while the centers stay tender. When the meat lands on top of the eggplant, the juices run down into the puree, and the two flavors start to blend before you’ve picked up a fork. Drag a piece of lamb through the eggplant and you get smoke, richness and that faint sweetness lamb has when it’s grilled right, all in one bite.
The bean salad does the quiet work of keeping it from getting heavy, with a fresh, bright contrast between bites. Whatever eggplant is left at the end shouldn’t go back to the kitchen.
There’s plenty more from the grill. The Urfa Kebab, Chicken Adana, Beef Shish and Lamb Chops are all served with Turkish rice and bean salad, and the Beyti Special rolls chargrilled ground beef in flatbread under tomato sauce. Bigger groups should get the Mixed Grill, a platter of Urfa, chicken, meatballs, beef kebab and Chicken Adana. The Lamb Shank and Grilled Branzino round out the large plates.
For dessert, ask your server what’s on the tray that night. The selection rotates, and Selda makes its Turkish baklava by hand.
Selda Dallas is at 6006 Belt Line Road and opens daily at 11 a.m. The full menu is on its website.
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