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Ottoman

Kirsten Lawson

Wagyu kebab at Ottoman.
Wagyu kebab at Ottoman.Rohan Thomson

Canberra Times Top 20 Restaurants of 2013: No.5

Ottoman Cuisine is a rarity in the modern dining world, a restaurant whose defining characteristics are elegance, opulence and comfort, combined with very good food.

Tables are well spaced for privacy, and the government clientele that frequent the place do so for good reason, including its Parliamentary Triangle locale. Seats are comfortable and have arms. Tables are white-clothed and glassware is given proper attention. Service is a big focus. This is sparkling dining, with a sense of occasion and excitement. Ottoman is establishment, but anything but staid.

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Serif Kaya is back full-time in the kitchen and keeping things moving by offering a long list of specials each day. This is where you'll find some highly seasonal dishes, like a fresh salad of heirloom tomatoes in tomato season, or another super-simple dish of charred herring, dusted with semolina, and dressed simply with lemon juice - the herring flesh just cooked and flaky. A recent highlight was a four-hour-cooked lamb shoulder, so gelatinous and slippery and full of body, served with little jugs of capsicum sauce and parsley sauce, and a salad of vinegary white beans.

A starter of salmon and prawn dolma is a long-time favourite, the seafood cooked with such a delicate hand (as all seafood is here), in its wrapping of vine leaves. Icli kofte is more rustic than delicate, a chunky-textured cracked-wheat pastry wrapped around spicy lamb and walnuts, spicy and hot, quite heavy, as if you're loading up to go off to war.

The sorbets should also be on your order list when you dine here - they're oddly textured, sticky and almost chewy, as a result of the salep powder they're made with, in the Turkish way.

The wine list is one of the city's best, with room for exploration across vintages as well as countries, and very well priced.

Ottoman has sat a long time at the centre of Canberra dining, since the days Kaya served from a much more humble corner in Manuka, and has managed in that time to remain relevant and on top of its game.

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