Address: 2 William Gladstone Str, Sofia
Tel: 088/ 813 24 65
Working hours: Every day from 9am-10.30 pm

Take-away items available
Reservations recommended for large groups
Credit cards not accepted

A restaurant that specialises in a cuisine with which you are totally unfamiliar presents a prime opportunity for widening your gastronomic horizons. Hoping for an education on Turkish food, I decided to investigate Gyulyum (how it is pronounced in Bulgarian, due to the umlauts in the Turkish word), located just off Hristo Botev Boulevard in the centre of Sofia. This restaurant is a smallish place with two storeys, large windows and an inviting, upper-end-of-casual interior.

Besides the many Turkish specialities on the menu, you'll find pizzas and some familiar Bulgarian items, including shopska salad and shkembe chorba (tripe soup). There's also a fairly comprehensive bar menu (although the beer selection is limited) and an assortment of non-alcoholic beverages. For the benefit of the Bulgarian-challenged, the staff speaks some English, and the menu items have English subtitles. Most of them also include English descriptions, but some are difficult to decipher, particularly the one that reads "lamb and calf mince on sofa".

I stopped in for lunch with a friend on a weekday afternoon, and the place looked so empty that we thought it was closed. We started off with ayran, a yoghurt drink. It was a good choice. We also ordered bread, and our waiter promptly served up a huge, piping-hot loaf of lavash (curiously, this is listed on the menu under Pizzas). This hollow, thin-crusted bread is brushed on top with an egg glaze and sprinkled with sesame seeds. (It's fun to poke it with your knife and watch it deflate, but mind the steam!) We chose two cold appetisers: Ezme Salad and Shakshuka. The fresh, condiment-like Ezme Salad, with its zesty combination of finely chopped tomatoes, garlic and cayenne pepper, had a flavour that was startlingly familiar - we instantly realised that this stuff is probably the closest thing there is in Bulgaria to Mexican salsa. Both this appetiser and the delicious, eggplant-based Shakshuka went well with the lavash. So far, so good.

Keen on trying a house speciality, we shared an order of the Gyulyum Grill entree, a nicely seasoned roll of minced meat wrapped in a layer of soft, pita-like bread, drizzled with a slightly hot chilli-style sauce, cut into bite-sized slices, and arranged around a bed of rice and some yoghurt. To conclude our tasty repast, we ordered Turkish coffee and then ambled over to the dessert counter to survey our options. We chose five bite-sized rolls of baklava, which were exactly the right density and neither too flaky nor too sweet. We also tried the Shaker Parei, a small syrup-soaked cake with an unusual flavour and a pleasantly grainy texture. Both sweets were a fitting complement to the characteristically thick and silty Turkish coffee with its straight-up, no-apologies taste.

This was a satisfying lunch, and reasonably priced; our total bill, which arrived promptly upon request (in a velvet jewellery box, yet), came to 20.20 leva. Most entrees range from 4.50 to eight leva. A couple of the fish entrees were in the 12- to 13-leva range, which seems a bit steep. There is also the Gyulyum Specialty, a large (1600g) mixed grill of skewered meats with garnish for 45.50 leva.

I returned on a Friday night with four friends. For starters, we chose lavash, some appetisers and the Gyulyum Salad, one of the few items on the menu without a description. The salad turned out to be a tasty mound of parsley with corn, finely chopped tomatoes and red peppers, garlic and bulgur wheat (or something very similar). As was the case during my previous visit, the waiter was friendly and prompt.

Our appetisers were the Ezme Salad, Patladjan (aubergine) Ezme, Meze Gyulyum and Cigarette Byurek. It was further verified at our table - which included a California native well-versed in Mexican cuisine - that the Ezme Salad would serve as a suitable substitute for the salsa-deprived. The other two cold appetisers were equally flavourful, perhaps because both of them were essentially the Ezme Salad with a couple of ingredients added.

Our warm appetiser, the Cigarette Byurek, was relatively disappointing. These small pastries, roughly the size and shape of cigars and filled with a bit of white cheese, were extremely greasy and not particularly interesting.

Because we wanted to save room for dessert, the five of us shared two skewer-cooked entrees. The Pileshki Sheesh featured simply seasoned, tasty chicken chunks. The Urfa Kebap consisted of spicy ground lamb moulded into a pair of sausage-like shapes; although it had an engaging aroma and flavour, it was slightly dry and could have used a bit of salt (difficult to add after the fact, as the salt would simply bounce off). Both entrees were accompanied by the same two garnishes - a small salad of shredded cabbage and other fresh vegetables, and a little pile of thinly sliced raw red onions. The onions were quite strong and a bit too much of a potential breath-wrecker.

We finished off with three desserts: Sutliash (a rather slippery flan-like custard), Shaker Parei and the Gyulyum Dessert (bananas sliced in half the long way, baked in sweet sauce, sprinkled with ground nuts and served hot). The Sutliash had an intriguingly decadent flavour. The Shaker Parei, with its cornmeal-like texture, was delicious and moist. The Gyulyum Dessert, made as it was from an already sweet fruit made even sweeter by baking it in a honey-based sauce, was somewhat cloying and rather large as well. If you order it, bring your sweet tooth, and make sure your friends have also brought theirs.

The verdict: Gyulyum is definitely worth a try. The welcoming atmosphere, good service, tasty options, and (mostly) inexpensive prices put it solidly in the three-star category.