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By Elena Kadvany
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I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in journalism. Though my first love is journalism, food is a close second. I am constantly on the lookout for new restaurants to try, building an ever-expanding "to eat" list. As a journalist, I'm always trolling news sources and social media websites with an eye for local food news, from restaurant openings and closings to emerging food trends. When I was a teenager growing up in Menlo Park, I always drove up to the city on weekends with the singular purpose of finding a better meal than I could at home. But in the past year or so, the Peninsula's food culture has been totally transformed, with many new restaurants opening and a continuous stream of San Francisco restaurants coming south to open Peninsula outposts. Don't navigate this food boom hungry and alone! Feed me your tips on new chefs and eats and together we'll share them with the broader community.
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Palo Alto's Spalti closes, to become Greek-Turkish restaurant
Uploaded: May 8, 2019
Editor's note: As of the week of May 13, Smyrna is now open for dinner only from 5-9 p.m.
Longtime Palo Alto Italian restaurant Spalti has closed, and the owner is partnering with another local restauranteur to open a new concept: Smyrna, a Greek-Turkish restaurant.
Philliph Bulutogli opened
Spalti at 417 S. California Ave. nearly three decades ago. Though the restaurant served Northern Italian food, Bulutogli is a Turkish-born Kurd. Bulutogli sold the restaurant in 2012 to Ayhan Akgul, who is also from Turkey.
Smyrna, a new Greek-Turkish restaurant, is now open on California Avenue in Palo Alto. Photo by Elena Kadvany.
Now, Akgul has teamed up with another native of Turkey and local restaurant owner, Zubi Duygu of
Urfa Bistro in Los Altos, to open Smyrna this month, Duygu said. Urfa, which opened in downtown Los Altos in 2015, serves a primarily Turkish menu.
The new restaurant is named for an ancient Greek city, once the site of the Greco-Turkish War and now known in Turkey by a different name, Izmir. Smyrna's tagline is "Two cultures, one journey," Duygu said.
The Smyrna menu includes dishes such as grilled Turkish olives; spanakopita stuffed wtih feta, onion and spinach; grilled haloumi with beets and pistachiol; a whole branzino; and New Zealand lamb chops with chard, minted pin nuts and pomegranate molasses.
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