If you’re looking for Turkish cuisine on the east side of town, you suddenly have fewer options.
Turkish Kitchen, which I reviewed in April, is closed and has a summons notice slap-dashedly taped to the front door. The complaint, filed by attorney Stephen Skipper on behalf of Men-yo Shiao, the owner of the property at 929 N. Semoran Blvd., is essentially an eviction notice. Skipper, reached at his Orlando office, would not comment on the complaint.
Don’t be confused the by name of the defendant. As I explained in my review of the Turkish Kitchen, it opened originally as Bosphorous Turkish Kitchen, despite the fact that we already had two Bosphorous Turkish Cuisine restaurants in the area. The issue with the name was resolved out of court, according to Doved Sexter, who owns the Bosphorous Turkish Cuisines on Restaurant Row in Orlando and Park Avenue in Winter Park. Turkish Kitchen dropped the Bosphorous from its sign and menu, but the name of the company remains Bosphorous Turkish Kitchen, LLC, with the State of Florida.
You might recall that last September I told you about a restaurant in Lakeland whose owner was trying to raise money through a Kickstarter campaign to help it relocate. That restaurant was the Bosphorous Turkish Kitchen in question above. I don’t know if the owner, Mustafa Paca, raised the funds he sought, and if those funds aided his relocation to Orlando, but it doesn’t look like another Kickstarter campaign is in the offing.
Down the road at 565 N. Semoran Blvd., Cappadocia is also closed, but a recording at its phone number says that it is closed only for a month and will reopen in early August. Seems a rash thing for a business to do, but at this point we’ll just have to take them at their word.
In the meantime, the two Bosphorouses are open and doing fine. In fact, the Park Avenue location is in the permitting phase to expand to the corner storefront next door. Sexter tells me there are still hoops to jump through and he doesn’t know if everything can be completed before the busy season begins this fall, in which case he might just wait on the construction.
